North Korea: Kim Jong Un’s sister denies Saturday’s shelling

2024-01-07 10:39:20

The sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un denied Sunday that her country fired 60 shells Saturday near a South Korean border island, saying it was a “decoy.”

The South Korean military announced that North Korea carried out the launches near the remote island of Yeonpyeong, not far from the inter-Korean maritime border, a day after large-scale artillery exercises carried out by the two countries. enemies in the same region.

According to Seoul, Saturday’s shells fell in a “buffer zone” created in 2018 under an agreement intended to prevent military incidents on the border. This agreement was shattered last November, first partially denounced by Seoul then entirely by Pyongyang.

“Our army did not fire a single shell into the water,” Kim Yo Jong said in a statement released Sunday by the official North Korean agency KCNA. “The rogue ROK military took the lure we set,” she added.

Kim Jong Un’s sister explained that North Korean soldiers had “observed the reaction” of South Korean forces by detonating sixty explosive charges simulating the sound of a cannon.

“The result was exactly what we expected,” Kim Yo Jong continued. “They mistook the sound of explosives for cannon fire, assumed it was an artillery provocation and shamelessly made up a lie.”

“In the future, they will even mistake the rumble of thunder in the northern sky for artillery fire from our army,” she quipped.

On Friday, residents of Yeonpyeong and Baengnyeong, two South Korean islands located near the border with North Korea, were ordered to evacuate to shelters due to North Korean artillery fire in the waters. surrounding areas. More than 200 shells were fired, according to Seoul, whose army responded with a live artillery firing exercise in Yeonpyeong hours later.

The two Koreas are still technically at war since the end of the conflict on the peninsula in 1953, which ended with an armistice rather than a peace treaty. Relations between the two countries are currently at their lowest point in decades.

At the end of December, Kim Jong Un ordered the acceleration of military preparations for a “war” that could “be launched at any time”. He denounced a “persistent and uncontrollable crisis situation”, according to him caused by Seoul and Washington with their joint military exercises in the region.