What's the difference between 여쭈다 and 여쭙다?

ANSWER: Their spellings?

I am somewhat confused by my dictionaries' definitions of 여쭈다 and 여쭙다.

묻다 and 여쭈다 are both verbs that can mean "to ask," but 여쭈다 is supposedly the more polite verb that is used when speaking to or about older people or superiors. And 여쭈다 can also mean "to tell" or "to inform, which means that 여쭈다 can mean both "to ask" and "to tell."

여쭙다 is another polite verb that means "to tell" or "to inform," but not "to ask." However, my Korean-Korean dictionary says that 여쭙다 is the polite form of 여쭈다, which suggests that 여쭈다 is polite when it means "to ask," but not polite when it means "to tell."

Is that not confusing?

Also, there is the question of form. In other words, both 여쭈다 and 여쭙다 can have the same form in certain instances. For example, under 여쭙다, my Korean-English dictionary translates 전날 여쭌 대로 as "as I told you the other day," but couldn't it also translate as "as I asked you the other day"?

So, what's going on with 여쭈다 and 여쭙다? I get the feeling that 여쭈다 and 여쭙다 are just different spellings of the same word.

From "Dong-a's Prime Korean-English Dictionary" (1998)

From "Dong-a's Korean-Korean Dictionary (1992)