By Kim Young-jin
The U.S.-led United Nations Command (UNC) next week will investigate whether North Korea violated the terms of an armistice when it fired two rounds at a South Korean guard post near the border, military officials said Saturday.
The shots were fired Friday evening from a guard post in the North and across the heavily-fortified border that divides the Koreas. Under rules of engagement, the South responded with three shots of its own. No damage was reported.
"The UNC's special investigation team will be dispatched around Nov. 2 after Col. Kurt Taylor discusses the team's makeup and activities," an official said. The team is expected to have around 10 members.
He added that while the probe will observe the spots where the gunshots originated from, it may be “difficult to establish whether or not the North intended to shoot at us.”
The skirmish came as the two Koreas attempt to improve ties on the peninsula, still thorny after the sinking of the South Korean warship Cheonan in March.
Over the weekend, the sides held the first round of reunions of families separated by the Korean War (1950-53), as scheduled, the first in a year and seen as a sign of smoothing ties.
The one-off event came after Seoul and Pyongyang, during meetings of their Red Cross branches last week, failed to set a regularized schedule for the reunions due to disagreements over conditions. The North requested a huge aid package including 500,000 tons of rice as a concession.
The firing also followed just hours after Pyongyang threatened, in typically strong language, “merciless physical retaliation” after the South refused to hold inter-Korean military talks.
The South’s declining of the talks came as the sides remain at odds over the sinking of the Cheonan near the maritime border, which took 46 lives. South Korea and its allies blame the incident on a North Korean torpedo attack, citing the results of a multinational investigation, while Pyongyang maintains it was not involved.
Seoul wants Pyongyang to apologize in order to improve inter-Korean relations and show a genuine intent to denuclearize before
multilateral talks on the latter are resumed.
The North has signaled its willingness to come back to the talks, but China, Japan and the South, have prioritized the pursuit of tangible results over simply resuming the forum.
No unusual activity has been detected around the military demarcation line since last Friday’s skirmish, the official said. The South’s military will open its own investigation into the matter in addition to the UNC-led probe.