2024-01-05 10:16:05
The South Korean army reported this Friday that it responded with live fire maneuvers to the artillery tests carried out shortly before by North Korea in the Yellow Sea that led Seoul to order the evacuation of two of its border islands.
The South Korean army issued this Friday evacuation orders for Yeonpyeong and Baengnyeong islandslocated off the North Korean coast in the Yellow Sea, after Pyongyang fired about 200 artillery rounds in nearby areas that did not cause damage to the population.
“The North Korean army fired more than 200 rounds between 09:00 and 11:00 (0:00 and 2:00 GMT) today, Friday, January 5, in the area of Cape Jangsan, north of Baengnyeong Island, and Cape Sanseong, north of Yeonpyeong Island,” the South Korean General Staff (JCS) reported in a statement sent to the media.
“No damage has been caused to civilians or the army. and the point of impact is located north of the NLL”, indicates the text in reference to the acronym of the Northern Limit Line, a dividing line in the Yellow Sea (called the West Sea in the two Koreas) that Pyongyang rejects and which has been the scene of numerous brawls, including the bombing of Yeonpyeong by the North that cost the lives of four southerners in 2010.
An official at Yeongpyeong City Hall, where about 1,700 people live, told Yonhap news agency that two evacuation orders were issued, at 12:02 and 12:30 local time (3:02 and 3:30 GMT), by decision of a military unit that spoke of “North Korean provocations.” Yonhap also confirmed that around the same time the approximately 4,000 residents of Baengnyeong, South Korea’s westernmost island, were ordered to move to shelters.
On November 23, 2010 Some live fire maneuvers that the South Korean navy was carrying out near Yeonpyeong, located 115 kilometers west of Seoul and just 10 from the North Korean coast, were responded to with dozens of artillery rounds fired by the North on this island. The episode destroyed several buildings and left 18 injured in addition to the four fatalities mentioned.
Designed by the United Nations to avoid new clashes after the signing of the armistice that ended the Korean War in 1953, the NLL is rejected by North Koreawhich defends that the divide should be located further south.
The clashes around the NLL between the armies of the two Koreas, which are technically still at war as the aforementioned armistice has not been replaced by a peace agreement, have left more than 50 dead, mainly military, on both sides in the last 20 years.
In that area it was also sunk by a North Korean torpedo The southern corvette ROKS Cheonan and 46 of its crew lost their lives.
The episode illustrates the renewed increase in military tensions between the two Koreas after Pyongyang announced in November that it was suspending a 2018 bilateral military agreement that sought to reduce tension in border areas and that, among other things, prohibited live-fire maneuvers around the divide.
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