South Korean troops fired warning shots after North Korean soldiers briefly crossed the border this week, Seoul’s military said yesterday, with tensions high over Pyongyang’s barrage of trash-carrying balloons and the South’s retaliatory loudspeaker campaign.
The Sunday incursion over the line that separates the two militaries took place in an overgrown area of the heavily fortified border area and was likely accidental, the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said.
“Some North Korean soldiers working within the DMZ [demilitarized zone] on the central front briefly crossed the Military Demarcation Line [MDL],” the JCS said in a statement, referring to the line of control between the two Koreas.
Photo: AFP
“After our military issued warning broadcasts and warning shots, they retreated northward,” it said, adding that there had been “no unusual movements observed” subsequently.
About 20 North Korean soldiers crossed the border, the JCS said.
The incursion was likely accidental, JCS spokesperson Lee Sung-joon told reporters yesterday.
“The situation at that time was that the DMZ was now overgrown with trees and the MDL mark was not clearly visible,” Lee said. “There was no road, and the [North Korean soldiers] were moving through the bushes, and we were observing [them] even before they got close to the MDL.
“We believe that they did not intend to invade, considering that they immediately moved northward after the warning broadcasts and warning shots,” he said.
Also yesterday, Seoul’s spy agency said it had detected signs that Pyongyang was demolishing sections of the inter-Korean railway.
The incursion of the North Korean soldiers could be a “small provocation” to test the waters ahead of a bigger move, said Ahn Chan-il, a defector-turned-researcher who runs the World Institute for North Korea Studies.
“It can also be seen as part of Kim Yo-jong’s preparation for what she described as a ‘new countermeasures,’” he said, referring to North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s sister.
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