SEOUL (AFP) – North Korea fired an artillery barrage near two South Korean border islands yesterday, Seoul’s defence ministry said, prompting a live-fire drill from the South Korean military.
Residents of both islands were ordered to evacuate and ferries were suspended as South Korea held a live-fire exercise after the North’s barrage – one of the most serious military escalations on the peninsula since Pyongyang fired shells at one of the same islands in 2010.
Yesterday’s live firing followed repeated warnings from Kim Jong- un’s regime in Pyongyang that it was prepared for war against South Korea and the United States.
Seoul’s defence ministry said the North’s military fired “over some 200 rounds” of artillery shells yesterday morning near Yeonpyeong and Baengnyeong, two sparsely populated South Korean islands that are just south of a defacto maritime border between the two sides.
The shells landed in the so-called buffer zone along the border, created by a 2018 tension-reducing deal, which fell apart in November after Kim’s spy satellite launch.
Resuming artillery fire within the buffer zone “is a provocative act that threatens peace on the Korean Peninsula and escalates tensions”, Seoul’s Defence Minister Shin Won-sik said.
In response to Pyongyang’s actions, Seoul’s military will take “immediate, strong, and final retaliation – we must back peace with overwhelming force”, he added.
China yesterday called for “restraint” from all sides.
“We hope that all relevant parties maintain calm and restraint, refrain from taking actions that aggravate tensions, avoid further escalation of the situation, and create conditions for the resumption of meaningful dialogue,” foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin told reporters.
Yeonpyeong, which has around 2,000 residents, is about 115 kilometres (km) west of South Korea’s capital, Seoul.
Baengnyeong, with a population of 4,900, is about 210km west of Seoul.
Local officials on both islands told AFP that residents had been told to evacuate, describing the order as a “preventative measure” ahead of the South Korean military drill. The order was lifted soon after, the Yonhap news agency reported.
One resident of the island said they were “shaking in fear” at the barrage.
“At first I thought it was the shells fired by our own military… but was told later it was by North Korea,” Kim Jin-soo, a Baengnyeong island resident told local broadcaster YTN.
