North and South Korea Trade Artillery Fire as Tensions Soar
By Lim Chang-Won. South and North Korea traded artillery fire across their heavily militarised border on Thursday, in a rare exchange that left no casualties but pushed already elevated cross-border tensions to dangerously high levels.
North Korea followed up with an ultimatum sent via military hotline that gave the South 48 hours to dismantle loudspeakers blasting propaganda messages across the border or face further military action . . .
Direct exchanges of fire across the inter-Korean land border are extremely rare, mainly, analysts say, because both sides recognise the risk for a sudden and potentially disastrous escalation between two countries that technically remain at war.
Thursday’s incident came amid heightened tensions following mine blasts that maimed two members of a South Korean border patrol earlier this month and the launch this week of a major South Korea-US military exercise that infuriated Pyongyang.
In a detailed press briefing later in the day, the South’s defence ministry said the nuclear-armed North initially fired a single artillery round over the border shortly before 4:00pm (0700 GMT). (Read more from “North and South Korea Trade Artillery Fire as Tensions Soar” HERE)
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Rival Koreas Trade Artillery, Rocket Fire at Border
By Hyung-Jin Kim. South Korea fired dozens of shells Thursday at rival North Korea after the North lobbed a single rocket round at a South Korean town near the world’s most heavily armed border, the South’s Defense Ministry said.
The Defense Ministry said in a statement that its artillery shells landed at the place where North Korea had fired its rocket. There were no other immediate details from the military and no reports of injuries. It appeared that North Korea did not respond to South Korea’s returned fire.
North Korea had previously threatened to attack South Korean loudspeakers that have been broadcasting, for the first time in 11 years, anti-Pyongyang propaganda messages across their shared border. Pyongyang also restarted its own loudspeakers aimed at the South.
About 80 residents in the South Korean town where the shell fell, Yeoncheon, were evacuated to underground bunkers, and authorities urged other residents to evacuate, a Yeoncheon official said, requesting anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to speak to the media.
In the nearby border city of Paju, residents were asked to stay home. On Baeknyeong Island near the Koreas’ disputed western sea boundary — the scene of several bloody skirmishes in recent years — residents in villages near a site where South Korea operates one of its loudspeakers were also evacuated, according to island officials. (Read more from this story HERE)
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North Korea Declares “Quasi-State of War” Today on South
Photo Credit: CNN
Tensions on the Korean peninsula ratcheted up after two South Korean soldiers were maimed on Aug. 4 by land mines planted along the Demilitarized Zone. A U.N. Command investigation determined the mines had been planted by the North along a known South Korean patrol route. Pyongyang has denied involvement.
In response to the attack, South Korea resumed anti-Pyongyang broadcasts through loudspeakers along the border, and the North retaliated with its own broadcasts. North Korea demanded the broadcasts end by Friday evening.
On Thursday North Korea fired an artillery round into Yeoncheon near the DMZ. The South responded by firing dozens of shells at the point of origin of the North’s round, according to the Ministry of National Defense statements reported by Yonhap News.
While the two Koreas have traded fire several times in recent years, this marked the most serious incident since the North’s sinking of the Cheonan warship in 2010, killing 46 sailors, and its shelling of the Yeonpyeong island later that year that left four dead. (Read more from this story HERE)
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