North and South Korea Exchange Fire Across Disputed Sea Border - NYTimes.com - 0 views
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North Korea and South Korea fired hundreds of artillery shells across their disputed western sea border on Monday, escalating military tensions a day after the North threatened to conduct more nuclear tests.
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Earlier on Monday, North Korea told the South that it would conduct live-fire military drills in seven zones along the maritime border, which hugs the southern coast of North Korea.
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“This is a premeditated provocation to test our will to defend the maritime border, and if the North provokes again using our response today as an excuse, we will act decisively,” Mr. Kim said. “We have increased our vigilance along the western frontier islands and boosted weapons’ readiness there.”
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Artillery exchanges in the disputed waters are not unprecedented, but rising military tensions there indicated that after months of relative calm, hostilities between the two Koreas have begun ratcheting up again. They raised fears that the often-repeated cycle of peace overtures followed by military provocations was resuming on the Korean Peninsula.“Pyongyang prefers to strike when it sees Washington as weak or distracted, beset by bigger problems,” Lee Sung-yoon, a North Korea expert at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, said, referring to the North’s capital.
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Citing the joint military exercises Washington and Seoul started in late February as a provocation, North Korea has test-fired a series of rockets and short- and midrange ballistic missiles in recent weeks. The tests prompted the United Nations Security Council to warn last week of new action against the country, which is already under heavy sanctions.
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The two parties in the Korean War never agreed on a western sea border when the three-year conflict ended in a cease-fire in 1953. South Korea tries to defend the so-called northern limit line, which was unilaterally declared by the United Nations. North Korea does not recognize it, claiming another demarcation line farther south.
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The waters were the scene of several naval skirmishes in recent years. In 2010, North Korea fired hundreds of artillery rounds into disputed waters, some of them falling south of the northern limit line. Later that year, it shelled one of the South Korean border islands, killing four people and prompting the South to retaliate with its own barrage against North Korean gun positions.
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Kim Jong-un, who came to power after the death of his father, Kim Jong-il, in 2011, has so far “turned out to be more of a hard-liner and far more bellicose in external relations than his father,” said Cheong Seong-chang, a
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There was no sign of an imminent nuclear test from North Korea, but the South Korean military was operating an emergency response system to promptly handle North Korean provocations, the South Korean defense ministry said.