South Korea conducts first live-fire artillery drill along maritime border in seven years

Defense

Published: 26 Jun. 2024, 17:24 Updated: 26 Jun. 2024, 18:20

South Korea conducts first live-fire artillery drill along maritime border in seven years

A K-9 howitzer on Yeonpyeong Island fires a round during the South Korean Marine Corps' first live-fire artillery exercise in seven years near the Northern Limit Line on Wednesday. [YONHAP]

South Korea's military conducted a live-fire artillery exercise on islands near the western inter-Korean maritime border for the first time in seven years on Wednesday, according to the Marine Corps.

The Marine Corps said troops from the 6th Marine Brigade under the North West Islands Defense Command fired more than 290 live rounds into the sea from K-9 howitzers and Chunmoo multiple rocket launcher systems deployed on Yeonpyeong and Baengnyeong islands, which lie south of the Northern Limit Line (NLL).

The exercise took place three weeks after South Korea fully suspended its participation in a 2018 inter-Korean military agreement intended to reduce tensions after the North jammed GPS signals along the border and launched hundreds of trash-laden balloons into the South.

Earlier the same day, the North launched a ballistic missile that exploded midair, according to the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff.

The Marine Corps held its last full-scale live-fire exercise on the islands in 2017, a year before Seoul and Pyongyang signed the military accord.

The accord banned live-fire artillery drills 85 kilometers (52.8 miles) south and 50 kilometers north of the NLL to lower the risk of accidental clashes.

While the NLL functions as the de facto inter-Korean maritime boundary in the Yellow Sea, the North has disputed the line on multiple occasions.

The North fired around 170 artillery shells on Yeonpyeong Island in November 2010 after shells fired by the South Korean military during a live-fire exercise landed south of the NLL but within the 12-nautical mile zone claimed by the North as its territorial waters.

The North’s bombardment of the island killed two South Korean soldiers and two civilians.

Eight months prior, the South Korean Navy frigate ROKS Cheonan sank near Baengnyeong Island following an explosion that an official investigation attributed to a North Korean torpedo fired by a midget submarine. Forty-six seamen died in the sinking.

The Nimitz-class nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt, right, begins to depart Busan on Wednesday to take part in Freedom Edge, a new trilateral multi-domain exercise involving South Korea, the United States and Japan. [NEWS1]

The Marine Corps’ resumption of live-fire artillery drills along the NLL came the same day that the Nimitz-class nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt departed Busan to take part in Freedom Edge, the first trilateral multi-doman exercise between South Korea, the United States and Japan.

The exercise's name was derived from the Freedom Shield exercise that the United States conducts every year with South Korea and the annual Keen Edge exercise it holds separately with Japan.

While ties between South Korea and Japan have often been strained due to long-running disputes tied to Japan’s 1910-45 colonial occupation of the Korean Peninsula as well as Tokyo’s claim to Dokdo, a pair of South Korean islets in the East Sea, the two countries are both treaty allies of the United States.

The three countries have ramped up security cooperation against the evolving threat posed by North Korea’s ballistic missile and nuclear weapons programs since President Yoon Suk Yeol took office in May 2022.

BY MICHAEL LEE [lee.junhyuk@joongang.co.kr]