Troops in NKorea, SKorea exchange gunfire along DMZ
SEOUL, South Korea — North and South Korean troops exchanged fire along their tense border Sunday, the South’s military said, the first such incident since the rivals took unprecedented steps to lower frontline animosities in late 2018.
Violent confrontations have occasionally occurred along the border, the world’s most heavily fortified. While Sunday’s incident is a reminder of persistent tensions, it didn’t cause any known casualties on either side and is unlikely to escalate, observers said.
The Joint Chiefs of Staff in Seoul said in a statement that North Korean troops fired several bullets at a South Korean guard post inside the border zone. South Korea responded with a total of 20 rounds of warning shots on two occasions before issuing a warning broadcast, it said.
South Korea suffered no casualties, the military said. Defense officials said it’s also unlikely that North Korea had any casualties, since the South Korean warning shots were fired at uninhibited North Korean territory. The North’s official Korean Central News Agency, or KCNA, did not immediately report about the incident.
A preliminary South Korean analysis showed North Korea’s firing was probably not a calculated provocation, though Seoul will continue examining whether there was any motivation for the action, a South Korean defense official said. He spoke on condition of anonymity.
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo also said it was believed that North Korea’s firing was not intentional.
“We think those are accidental,” Pompeo said on ABC’s “This Week.”
Farming activities
around the North Korean area where the firing occurred continued throughout Sunday and North Korea’s military didn’t display any other suspicious activities after the gunfire, the South Korean defense official said. He said there was thick fog at the time of the incident.
Later Sunday, South Korea sent a message to North Korea to try to avoid an escalation, but the North did not immediately reply, according to South Korea’s military.
The Korean Peninsula remains split along the 155mile-long, 21⁄2-mile-wide border called the Demilitarized Zone. It was originally created as a buffer after the end of the 1950-53 Korean War. But unlike its name, an estimated 2 million mines
are peppered inside and near the DMZ, which is also guarded by barbed wire fences and tank traps.
The last time there was gunfire along the Korea border was in November 2017, when North Korean soldiers sprayed bullets at a colleague fleeing to South Korea. The defector was hit five times, but survived and is now living in South Korea. South Korea didn’t return fire.
Previously, the Koreas traded gunfire along the DMZ numerous times, but no deadly clashes have occurred in recent years. A 2015 land mine blast that maimed two South Korean soldiers pushed the Koreas to the brink of an armed conflict. South Korea blamed North Korea for the explosion.