SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — South Korea’s military said Tuesday it fired warning shots after North Korean troops briefly violated their tense border earlier this week, as the rival countries are embroiled in a Cold War-like military operation. Balloon launch And propaganda broadcast.
The heavily guarded border between the two Koreas has seen occasional bloodshed and violent clashes. Sunday’s incident came amid rising tensions between the two Koreas, but observers say it is unlikely to be a source of new hostility because South Korea believes the North did not deliberately violate the border and has not fired back.
South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said several North Korean soldiers engaged in unspecified activities north of the border crossed the Military Demarcation Line that divides the two countries at 12:30 p.m. on Sunday.
The North Korean soldiers, some of them armed, who were carrying construction equipment, quickly returned to their own territory after South Korean forces fired warning shots and made a warning broadcast, the Joint Chiefs of Staff said. North Korea has not engaged in any other suspicious activity, it said.
South Korea’s military assessed that the incident did not appear to be a deliberate border crossing by North Korean soldiers because it was in a forested area and military demarcation line markers were not clearly visible, Joint Chiefs of Staff spokesman Lee Seong-jun told reporters.
Lee gave no further details, but South Korean media reports said about 20 to 30 North Korean soldiers appeared to have become lost and had entered about 50 meters (165 feet) of South Korean territory, most of whom were carrying pickaxes and other construction tools.
The DMZ, 248 km long and 4 km wide, is the most heavily fortified border in the world, with an estimated two million land mines strewn both inside and outside the border, barbed wire fences, tank barriers and combat troops from both sides – a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean War, which ended with an armistice rather than a peace treaty.
South Korea on Sunday resumed broadcasting anti-Pyongyang propaganda from loudspeakers on the border in retaliation for North Korea’s recent launching of balloons loaded with fertilizer and garbage across the border. South Korea said North Korea had installed its own loudspeakers on the border in response but had not yet activated them.
North Korea said the balloon campaign was in response to South Korean activists launching their own balloons into North Korea to drop propaganda leaflets critical of leader Kim Jong Un’s dictatorial rule, as well as USB sticks containing K-pop songs and Korean dramas.
North Korea is extremely sensitive to any outside criticism of its political system, with most of its 26 million people officially denied access to foreign news. On Sunday night, Kim Yo Jong, a senior official and sister of Kim Jong Un, warned of “new responses” if South Korea refused to continue its loudspeaker broadcasts and stop its civilian leafleting campaign.
The exchange of loudspeakers and balloons has amounted to Cold War-era psychological warfare and has deepened tensions between the two Koreas as talks over North Korea’s nuclear program have been stalled for years.
