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N. Korea launches firing drill near sea border

May 13, 2015

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un (L) salutes during a landing drill of the Army Ground, Naval, Air and Anti-Air forces of the Korean People’s Army (KPA) in this undated photo released by North Korea’s Korean Central News Agency (KCNA). (Yonhap/KCNA)

SEOUL (Yonhap) — North Korea launched on Wednesday a firing drill near the tensely patrolled western maritime border with the South in the latest in a continuing series of tension-escalating military provocations.

The military exercise, which started at 9 p.m., came just hours after Seoul was notified of Pyongyang’s plan to stage artillery drills near the Northern Limit Line (NLL) in the Yellow Sea.

About 130 artillery rounds, some shot from a warship, were fired near South Korea’s northernmost islands of Baengnyeong and Yeonpyeong as warned by the North, but none landed on the south side of the NLL and the drill ended at 10:25 p.m., the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said.

The South Korean military convened an emergency counterattack force and upgraded its military response position, but no clashes were reported as of late Wednesday.

“North Korea’s latest maritime firing is a clear act of tension escalation on the northern side of the NLL and our military is standing in all-out military reaction position with a keen eye upon the movement of the North Korean military,” the JCS said after the drill’s wrap-up.

The NLL is the de facto inter-Korean sea border in the Yellow Sea, though Pyongyang does not acknowledge it and has demanded the line be drawn farther south. After the 1950-53 Korean War ended in a ceasefire, the U.S.-led United Nations Command drew the border.

The North has often protested the validity of the NLL and launched a similar firing drill just north of the demarcation in late March last year, escalating military tension in the border area.

In a notice to Seoul’s JCS earlier in the day, the North said it will carry out firing drills anytime between 3:00 p.m., Wednesday and midnight Friday in their territorial waters just above the NLL.

It was the latest in a series of saber-rattling moves by the North against the South. Earlier this week, Pyongyang threatened to launch a strike against South Korean warships “without any prior warning,” claiming South Korean naval speedboats intruded into the North’s territorial waters in the Yellow Sea two to three times. Seoul has denied any incursions.

The poorly marked border in the Yellow Sea remains a powder keg with the two Koreas fighting bloody battles there in 1999, 2002 and 2009. In November 2010, the North also launched an artillery attack against Yeonpyeong Island, killing two marines and two civilians and wounding more than a dozen others. Most recently, the two Koreas briefly exchanged shots in October 2014, after a North Korean warship violated the border and crossed into the South.