North Korea is conducting new live artillery exercises on its western coast, near the maritime border with South Korea, for the third straight day on Sunday, January 7, Yonhap announced.
The South Korean news agency reported, citing a military source, that the North Korean army fired shells that landed just north of the maritime border between the two countries near Yeonpyeong, a South Korean island in the Yellow Sea near the North Korean coast.
Local authorities on remote South Korean islands in the Yellow Sea told Agence France-Presse that they had sent messages to residents' cellphones urging them to stay home. “North Korean cannon fire is currently being heard,” these reports said, advising residents against “outdoor activities” and raising the possibility of a response from South Korean forces.
According to Yonhap, no projectiles fell on the South Korean side of the maritime demarcation line.
Evacuation order on Friday
On Friday, residents of Yeonpyeong and Baengnyeong, another South Korean island near North Korea, were ordered to evacuate to shelters due to North Korean artillery fire in surrounding waters. According to Seoul, more than 200 grenades were fired, and the army responded with a live-fire exercise a few hours later in Yeonpyeong.
And on Saturday, the South Korean military announced that North Korea had fired 60 shells into the waters near Yongpyeong, near the maritime demarcation line.
However, North Korea offered a different version of Saturday's shootings. According to Kim Yo-jong, the powerful sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, they were actually explosive charges simulating the sound of a cannon that North Korean forces fired to test South Korea's response. “Our army did not fire a single shell into the water. The renegade ROK military has accepted the temptation we have set,” she said, quipping: “In the future, they will mistake even the rumble of thunder in the northern sky for an artillery fire from our army.” »
The South Korean authorities have not yet responded to these statements.
This military escalation in the Yellow Sea is one of the most serious on the peninsula since 2010, when the North bombed Yeonpyeong, killing four people, including two civilians. This follows a series of bellicose statements by North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, who in recent days has threatened in particular to “annihilate” South Korea and the United States.
Relationships at their lowest point
The island of Yeonpyeong, which has around 2,000 inhabitants, is located 115 kilometers west of Seoul and around ten kilometers south of the North Korean coast. Also very close to North Korea, Baengnyeong with 4,900 inhabitants is 210 kilometers from the capital.
The two Koreas have technically still been at war since the end of the conflict on the peninsula in 1953, which ended with an armistice rather than a peace treaty. For more than seventy years, the Korean peninsula has been the scene of increasing tensions and armed incidents, punctuated by periods of relative detente between Pyongyang and Seoul.
But relations between the two Koreas are currently at their lowest level in decades. Last year, North Korea enshrined its status as a nuclear power in its constitution and fired several intercontinental ballistic missiles in violation of UN resolutions.
At the end of a meeting of the Central Committee of the Workers' Party of Korea in late December, Kim Jong-un ordered military preparations to be accelerated for a “war” that could “start at any time.” He also ruled out reconciliation with South Korea, citing the “ongoing and uncontrollable crisis situation,” which he said was triggered by joint military exercises by Seoul and Washington in the region.
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As a deterrent, the US armed forces have sent the nuclear submarine USS Missouri, the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan and a B-52 strategic bomber to South Korea in recent months, each time causing anger from Pyongyang.