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North Korea fires 100 rounds of artillery near eastern sea border

July 14, 2014

People watch a TV news program reporting on North Korea’s artillery shells at Seoul Railway Station in Seoul, South Korea, Monday, July 14, 2014. North Korea on Monday fired artillery shells into waters near its sea border with South Korea, Seoul’s military said, a day after the country test-launched two ballistic missiles in the latest of a series of weapon tests. The superimposed letters on the screen read: ” North Korea fired about 100 artillery shells into NLL North Korea area on east sea”. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)

(Yonhap) — North Korea on Monday fired about 100 artillery shells into the East Sea from a place close to the inter-Korean border, the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said, the latest in a series of military provocations.

“North Korea fired off about 100 artillery shells in a northeast direction into the East Sea for about 30 minutes from 11:43 a.m. from a place hundreds of meters away from the demilitarized zone (DMZ) in Goseong, Gangwon Province,” JCS spokesman Um Hyo-sik said.

“They landed in the sea, some 1 to 8 kilometers north of the Northern Limit Line (NLL),” he said, citing the de facto inter-Korean maritime border.

While it is unknown exactly which launchers the North used to fire the shells, the South Korean military said most of them were likely fired from the North’s 122-meter or 200-meter launchers.

“Some of them flew some 3 kilometers, and others at the maximum of 50 kilometers,” a JCS officer said, requesting anonymity.

“It is not unusual for Pyongyang to carry out such a shelling on its east coast, but it is rare that the North has done that near the military demarcation line,” he noted.

Monday’s firing came a day after its firing of two ballistic missiles into the East Sea from its southern border city of Kaesong, and marked the third provocation in less than a week.

It also brought the number of the bellicose communist country’s rocket launches to 16 so far this year.

“North Korea appears to show off its capabilities to launch attacks at any time,” the officer said.

“North Korea is expected to continue its military provocations for some time, with the joint Seoul-Washington military exercise later this week and their rescue drills with Japan due later this month,” he said.

The joint Seoul-Washington exercise will involve the 97,000-ton supercarrier USS George Washington. (Yonhap)