South Korean Defense Minister Cho Young-kil offered resignation Tuesday amid a growing dispute over the Navy's firing of warning shots against a ship of Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) earlier this month.

"As the case came to an end, I believe I finished my role as the defense minister," Cho Young-kil said in a hastily arranged press meeting. "I conclude it is time to come to the finish."

South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun will decide on Wednesday whether to accept the resignation of Cho Young-kil, Roh's spokesman Kim Jong-min said to reporters.

If Roh accepts the resignation, "Cho's replacement will be able to be announced Wednesday or Thursday," added the spokesman.

Cho made clear on his intention to resign amid a growing dispute over the July 14 incident. South Korean navy fired two warning shots to a DPRK patrol boat as it crossed the controversial inter-Korean sea border on July 14.

Initially, South Korean navy said the DPRK ship ignored repeated radio warnings from South Korea. But later South Korean military acknowledged that it received three radio messages from DPRK's navy, including one before firing warning shots.

The two sides set up hotline between navies according to an unprecedented agreement between Seoul and Pyongyang to avoid armed clashes at the disputed border in this June.

The controversy deepened as the South Korean military's top intelligence analyst came under suspicion of leaking sensitive data on the incident to win public backing for the navy against the presidential office.

Lt. Gen. Park Seung-chun, the chief information analyst at the office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), offered his resignation Monday to take responsibly for the leakage.

The focus has since shifted to Defense Minister Cho, who said last Saturday that the commander in chief of the Navy's fleet operations "deliberately" omitted to report the radio exchanges to higher officers out of concern that he might be ordered not to fire warning shots.

Cho's remarks contradicted the conclusions of the government investigation that the top Navy officers decided not to make the report because he believed the DPRK's radio messages were a deception.

Gen. Kim Jong-hwan, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, issued written reprimands earlier Tuesday to two general-grade officers and oral reprimands to three colonel-level officers, Kim Jong-chan, a spokesman at the Defense Ministry, said.

The two general-grade officers -- the commander in chief of the Navy's fleet operations and the chief of the intelligence fusion bureau at the Joint Chiefs of Staff -- failed to report the ship-to-ship radio exchanges due to misjudgment and carelessness, according to government investigations.

The measures were taken on the orders of Roh Moo-hyun, who instructed the Defense Ministry to impose "light" discipline on the five officers to avoid further disputes.