North Korea conducts new border artillery drills with live ammunition

North Korea is carrying out new live ammunition artillery exercises on Sunday, January 7, for the third day in a row, on its west coast, near the maritime border with South Korea. Yonhap announced.

The South Korean news agency, citing a military source, reported that the North Korean army fired shells that fell just north of the maritime border between the two countries near Yeonpyeong, a South Korean island isolated 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’ mobile phones urging them to stay home. “North Korean cannon fire is currently being heard”say these messages, which advise residents against “outdoor activities” and raise 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 Friday

On Friday, residents of Yeonpyeong and Baengnyeong, another South Korean island located close to North Korea, were ordered to evacuate to shelters due to North Korean artillery fire in the surrounding waters . More than 200 shells were fired, according to Seoul, whose 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 sixty shells into the waters near Yongpyeong, near the maritime demarcation line.

North Korea, however, provided another version for Saturday’s shootings. According to Kim Yo-jong, the powerful sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, these were actually explosive charges simulating the sound of a cannon, which North Korean forces detonated to test the reaction South Korean. “Our army did not fire a single shell into the water. The rogue ROK military took the bait we set”she said, before ironically: “In the future, they will even mistake the rumble of thunder in the northern sky for artillery fire from our army. »

The South Korean authorities have yet to react 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. It comes after a burst of bellicose statements from North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, who in recent days threatened to“annihilate” South Korea and the United States.

Relationships at rock bottom

Yeonpyeong Island, 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, 4,900 inhabitants, is 210 kilometers from the capital.

The two Koreas are still technically at war since the end of the conflict on the peninsula in 1953, which ended with an armistice and not a peace treaty. For more than seventy years, the Korean peninsula has been the scene of periods of worsening tensions and armed incidents, interspersed with periods of relative détente 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 at the end of December, Kim Jong-un ordered the acceleration of military preparations for a ” war “ can “be triggered at any time”. He also ruled out any reconciliation with South Korea, emphasizing the “persistent and uncontrollable crisis situation” which he said was triggered by Seoul and Washington with their joint military exercises in the region.

In a deterrent effort, the US armed forces have sent the USS nuclear-powered submarine to South Korea in recent months. Missourithe aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan and a B-52 strategic bomber, each time angering Pyongyang.