Monitoring Desk
SEOUL: North Korea fired 130 rounds of artillery shells into the sea off its western and eastern coasts on Monday, revealed by the South Korean military, in the context of an apparent military exercise close to their disputed border.
According to the South Korean military, some of these artillery shells fell in a buffer zone close to the sea border and called this North Korean action a violation of the 2018 inter-Korean agreement mandated to lower tensions in the Korean Peninsula.
South Korea’s Ministry of Defense in its statement said that the South Korean military had sent warnings to North Korea several times about the firing.
The artillery fire was not immediately reported by North Korea, but it has been engaging in an increasing number of military exercises, missile launches, and drills involving warplanes and artillery shells.
Artillery Shells on Korean Peninsula
This year, joint military exercises by South Korea and the US have also increased. According to them, these military drills are necessary to deter the aggression of the nuclear-armed North.
The most significant agreement to result from the months of talks between North Korean supreme leader Kim Jong Un and then-South Korean President Moon Jae-in was the 2018 Comprehensive Military Agreement (CMA).
However, recent drills and displays of force along the heavily fortified border between the Koreas have raised concerns about the future of the measures, given that those talks have long since stalled.
This year, the North has allegedly repeatedly broken the agreement by conducting artillery drills, according to South Korea.
South Korea and the United States claim that North Korea has made preparations to resume nuclear testing after conducting long-range intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) testing started in 2017.
