North Korea conducted live artillery drills on its west coast near South Korean islands for the third straight day on Sunday, according to Seoul, whose populations were called to shelters.
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The South Korean military said the North “conducted artillery fire with more than 90 shells north of Yeonpyeong Island” from 4:00 p.m. to 5:10 p.m. or 4:00 a.m. to 5:10 a.m. GMT on Sunday.
“We strongly warn against North Korea's repeated artillery fire in an area where hostile actions are prohibited, endangering peace on the Korean Peninsula and escalating tensions,” the South Korean military said, demanding “that this stop immediately.”
The North Korean army said it conducted “live-fire maritime training” using 88 shells to ensure the maneuvers were “direction independent” of the maritime demarcation line.
According to a statement released by North Korea's KCNA agency, the exercises “did not pose a deliberate threat” to South Korea and were part of “our army's normal training system.”
According to the South Korean news agency Yonhap, no North Korean shells were received south of the Northern Limit Line (NLL), the de facto maritime border in the Yellow Sea, and no casualties were reported.
Local authorities in Yeonpyeong told AFP they had warned residents to stay home as a precaution.
North Korean shots had already fired on Friday and Saturday in the region, one of the buffer zones created by a 2018 deal that expired in November after Pyongyang launched a spy satellite.
On Friday, residents of Yeonpyeong and neighboring Baengnyeong Island were already ordered to evacuate to shelters due to North Korean artillery fire in the surrounding waters. Seoul said more than 200 grenades were fired, and the army responded with a live-fire exercise a few hours later in Yeonpyeong.
“Lure”
Pyongyang had claimed its launches were “a natural response” to exercises carried out by Seoul, Washington and Tokyo in the region.
On Saturday, the South Korean military said the North fired 60 shells near Yeongpyeong. However, Pyongyang provided a different version.
According to Kim Yo Jong, the powerful sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, these were explosive charges that simulated the sound of a cannon and were detonated by North Korean forces to test the South Korean response.
“Our army did not fire a single shell into the water,” Kim Yo Jong said in a statement broadcast by KCNA on Sunday.
“The breakaway ROK military accepted the temptation we set,” she said. Previously ironic: “In the future, they will even mistake the rumble of thunder in the northern sky for artillery fire.”
Seoul did not immediately respond to the claim.
“Confrontation phase”
This escalation in the Yellow Sea is one of the most serious since 2010, when the North bombed Yeonpyeong, killing four people, including two civilians. It follows a series of bellicose statements from North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, who has threatened to “annihilate” South Korea and the United States in recent days.
The island of Yeonpyeong, which has around 2,000 inhabitants, is located 115 km west of Seoul and around ten kilometers south of the North Korean coast. Also very close to North Korea is Baengnyeong with 4,900 inhabitants, 210 km from Seoul.
The two Koreas have technically still been at war since the end of the conflict in 1953, which ended with an armistice rather than a peace treaty. For more than 70 years, the peninsula has experienced alternating periods of heightened tension and relative relaxation.
Their relationship is currently at its lowest point in decades.
North Korea “has entered a phase of military confrontation,” Cho Han-bum, a researcher at the Korea Institute for National Unification, told AFP.
It “will not engage in explicit provocations, as it did in Yeonpyeong, but will continue to escalate military tensions” while holding the South accountable.
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.
In late December, Kim Jong-un ordered military preparations to be accelerated for a “war” that could “start at any time.”