 Evacuation drill: Residents of Baengnyeong Island, which is located just south of the maritime border with North Korea, gather at a shelter as the South Korean military holds a live-fire artillery drill near the disputed West Sea area Monday despite a spate of threatening rhetoric from Pyongyang. / Yonhap |
By Kim Young-jin
South Korea held a live-fire artillery drill near the disputed West Sea border with North Korea, Monday, despite a spate of threatening rhetoric from Pyongyang.
Held in waters near Baengnyeong and Yeonpyeong islands just south of the maritime border, the routine drills came after the North said it would counter with “merciless retaliatory strikes" if the South violated its territorial waters.
An official of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said while the North placed its forces on heightened alert, no unusual movement was detected.
The sea border remains extremely tense since the North shelled Yeonpyeong Island in November 2010, after drills by the South.
Concerns over the area have grown amid a power transition in the North, where Kim Jong-un, the untested new leader, may have to burnish his military credentials following the death of his father, the late ruler Kim Jong-il.
After Pyongyang’s deadly shelling of Yeonpyeong in November of that year, Seoul has bolstered its readiness in case of another North Korean provocation along the border and with Washington announced they would complete a joint operational plan to respond to such scenarios.
The drills involved Cobra attack helicopters, self-propelled howitzers and Vulcan cannon among others and lasted some two hours.
Military officials notified the North of the drills Sunday through channels at the truce village of Panmunjom. Pyongyang then warned against firing into its waters, saying Seoul "should not forget the lesson" of the Yeonpyeong incident in which four South Koreans died.
Since the attack, which caught Seoul off guard, the Lee Myung-bak administration has vowed stern retaliation to further such actions.
The North has continued to take a harsh line against the South in the aftermath of the death of the late Kim Jong-il, threatening never to deal with the Lee administration.
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