N Korea fires 60 artillery rounds near South Korean border island

SEOUL: North Korea’s military fired over 60 artillery rounds near Yeonpyeong Island on Saturday, Seoul’s military said, a day after both sides staged live-fire drills in the same area near their contested maritime border.

“North Korean forces conducted artillery fire with over 60 rounds” northwest of Yeonpyeong Island on Saturday afternoon, Seoul’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement.

On Friday, North Korea fired more than 200 rounds of artillery shells near Yeonpyeong and Baengnyeong, two sparsely populated islands situated just south of a defacto maritime border between the two sides.

Both Friday and Saturday, North Korea’s shells landed in a buffer zone created under a 2018 tension-reducing deal, which fell apart in November after the North launched a spy satellite.

Seoul’s military said Saturday that “the repeated artillery fire within the prohibited hostile act zone by North Korea poses a threat to the peace on the Korean Peninsula and escalates tensions”.