Show of might: A TV screen showing a file image of North Korea’s military exercise at the Seoul Railway Station in Seoul. — AP
Seoul: North Korea fired a barrage of artillery shells into a maritime buffer zone, Seoul’s military said, the latest in a series of launches by an increasingly belligerent Pyongyang.
About 130 artillery rounds were simultaneously fired at 2.59pm (1.59 Malaysian time) yesterday from two separate sites, one on North Korea’s east coast and one on the west coast, the South’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement.
Seoul’s military said the barrage was a “clear violation” of the 2018 agreement between the North and South that established the buffer zone in a bid to reduce tensions.
It said none of the shells crossed the Northern Limit Line, the de facto maritime border between the two countries.
The military said it had issued “several warnings” over the barrage, without giving any further details.
North Korea, however, claimed the barrage was a “tit for tat warning” against what it described as multiple artillery firings by the South.
A spokesperson for the General Staff of the North Korean People’s Army said in a statement that “dozens of projectiles supposed to be the shells of multiple rocket launchers” had been fired by the South yesterday.
North Korea’s army “will always take account of all provocative actions of the enemy and respond with resolute and overwhelming military action,” added a statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency.
Seoul’s military did not mention any exercises, but local reports said the South Korean and US militaries were conducting firing drills in the area.
At a summit in Pyongyang in 2018, former South Korean president Moon Jae-in and the North’s Kim Jong-un agreed to establish buffer zones along land and sea boundaries in a bid to reduce tensions.
But since talks collapsed in 2019, Kim has doubled down on his banned weapons programmes, and experts say he may now be testing South Korea by violating the buffer zone agreement. — AFP
