North Korea fired artillery shells near its sea boundaries with South Korea late Tuesday, a day after the South began annual military drills to better deal with North Korean provocations.
South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement early Wednesday that North Korea fired about 100 shells off its west coast and 150 rounds off its east coast, the Associated Press reported.
According to the statement, South Korean military broadcast messages several times asking North Korea to stop the firing, but there were no reports of violence between the rivals.
South Korea’s military said the shells didn’t land in South Korean territorial waters but fell inside the northern part of the maritime buffer zones the two Koreas established under a 2018 inter-Korean agreement aimed at reducing front-line animosities, AP reported.
It’s the second time North Korea has fired shells into the buffer zones since last Friday, when it shot hundreds of shells there in its most significant direct violation of the 2018 agreement.
South Korea’s military said North Korea must halt provocations that undermine peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula.
It added that it is boosting its military readiness and, in coordination with the United States, is closely monitoring North Korea’s moves.
Some foreign experts say North Korean leader Kim Jong Un would eventually aim to use his expanded weapons arsenal to pressure the United States and others to accept his country as a legitimate nuclear state and lift economic sanctions on the North.
