Pyongyang continues these training shots. North Korean artillery fired barrages Monday in the maritime “buffer zone” near the border with South Korea, the South Korean military said. The North Korean military simultaneously carried out, at 2:59 p.m. to the west over the Yellow Sea, the South Korean forces’ general staff said in a statement.
The general staff called these shots a “clear violation” of the military agreement concluded in 2018 between Seoul and Pyongyang. This agreement had established a “buffer zone” on both sides of the inter-Korean maritime border, where any naval exercise or firing with live ammunition is prohibited in order to reduce the risk of incident. No shells fell on the South Korean side of the border, the general staff said.
A “retaliatory warning”
For its part, North Korea claimed it was a “retaliatory warning” against what it described as multiple artillery fire by the South. A spokesman for the General Staff of the North Korean People’s Army said in a statement that “dozens of projectiles” from multiple rocket launchers were fired by the South on Monday.
The North Korean military “will always heed all provocative actions by the enemy and respond with resolute and overwhelming military action,” he added in the statement carried by the official KCNA news agency. Seoul did not report any military drills, but local media said the South Korean and US armies were currently conducting firing exercises in the area.
Record streak of shots
Pyongyang has carried out artillery fire towards the “buffer zone” on several occasions in recent months, at a time when tensions are at their height on the Korean peninsula. North Korea has also carried out a record series of missile launches in recent weeks, and Seoul and Washington lend it the intention to carry out a nuclear test soon, which would be the seventh in its history and its first since 2017.
Pyongyang, which under UN Security Council resolutions is barred from testing ballistic missiles, says the tests are a response to large-scale military exercises by South Korea, the United States and Japan in the region.