SKorea fires warning shots after 3rd intrusion
— South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said Friday it had fired warning shots after North Korean soldiers briefly crossed the heavily fortified border in the third such incursion this month.
On Thursday morning, “several North Korean soldiers who were working inside the DMZ on the central front line crossed the Military Demarcation Line,” Seoul’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said.
“After our military’s warning broadcasts and warning shots, the North Korean soldiers retreated back northward,” they added.
The nuclear-armed North has been reinforcing the border in recent months, adding tactical roads and laying more landmines, which has led to “casualties” among its troops due to accidental explosions, South Korea said.
Similar incidents took place on June 9 and Tuesday this week, with Seoul’s military saying both incursions appeared to be accidental.
Relations between the two Koreas are at one of their lowest points in years, with Kim Jong Un hosting Russian leader Vladmir Putin this week, and signing a mutual defense agreement that has raised hackles in Seoul.
In response, the South — a major weapons exporter — has said it will “reconsider” a longstanding policy that has prevented it from supplying arms directly to Ukraine.
“While attention is focused on Putin’s pariah partnerships, the Kim regime is recklessly endangering soldiers with rushed construction work at the inter-Korean border,” said Leif-Eric Easley, a professor at Ewha University in Seoul.
The work is likely aimed “as much at keeping their countrymen in as it is at keeping the South Koreans out,” he said, but warned that “a lack of inter-Korean communication channels and confidence-building mechanisms increases the danger of escalation in border areas.”
Meanwhile, a group of South Korean activists flew large balloons carrying anti-North Korean propaganda leaflets toward North Korea once more, adding to a campaign that aggravated animosities between the two countries.
The South Korean civilian group, led by North Korean defector Park Sang-hak, said it floated 20 balloons attached with 300,000 propaganda leaflets, 5,000 USB sticks with South Korean pop songs and TV dramas, and $3,000 bills from the South Korean border town of Paju on Thursday night.
Pyongyang resents such material and fears it could demoralize front-line troops and residents and eventually weaken leader Kim Jong Un’s grip on power, analysts said.
After previous leafleting by Park’s group and other South Korean activists, North Korean launched more than 1,000 balloons that dropped tons of trash in South Korea, smashing roof tiles and windows and causing other property damage.
In retaliation for the trash balloons, South Korea resumed with military loudspeakers installed at the border for the first time in years, to which Pyongyang warned that Seoul was “creating a prelude to a very dangerous situation.”