The year 2024 begins with the sound of cannons on the Korean peninsula. In line with the previous one, marked by an escalation of tensions that the South Korean Minister of Unification, Kim Yung-ho, attributed on Saturday January 6 to the North’s desire to “divert the discontent of the population onto economic problems”.
The day before, Matthew Miller, spokesperson for the American State Department, had reminded the South Korean agency Yonhap that the United States had not “no hostile intent” towards North Korea. Washington calls Pyongyang “to refrain from any further provocative and destabilizing action, and to return to diplomacy”in order to discuss the “ways to manage the risks of clashes and establish lasting peace on the peninsula”.
Mr. Miller was intervening after intense exchanges of fire in the Yellow Sea. North Korea fired 192 shells from Capes Jangsan and Deungsan in the southwest of the country, which fell in the buffer zone north of the Northern Limit Line (NLL), the de facto inter-Korean border in the Yellow Sea . This border area has been the scene of several skirmishes in the past, notably when North Korea bombed the nearby South Korean island of Yeonpyeong in 2010, killing four people.
Kim Jong-un says he is preparing for a “military confrontation »
The shooting prompted Seoul to issue alerts not only in Yeonpyeong but also in Baengnyeong, also neighboring the NLL, for residents to go to shelters. Maritime connections were briefly suspended. In the afternoon, South Korean soldiers based on the two islands responded with K9 howitzer and K1E1 tank fire in the waters south of the NLL, still in the buffer zone.
Subsequently, the North Korean military denied targeting the islands of Yeonpyeong and Baengnyeong. For the North, Friday’s exercise was “a sort of natural countermeasure” after the recent artillery fire “military gangsters” from South Korea. The South Korean and American military carried out a joint live-fire exercise on Thursday, January 4, near the Demilitarized Zone, the DMZ separating the two Koreas.
The North’s launches coincided with the announcement the same day of leader Kim Jong-un’s visit to a mobile missile launcher factory. He called for intensifying their production in preparation for a “military confrontation” with South Korea and the United States. Reacting to these events, China, close to North Korea, pleaded for “all parties exercise calm and restraint.”
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