SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — South Korean soldiers fired warning shots after North Korean troops briefly breached the tense border earlier this week, South Korea’s military said Tuesday, as the rivals engage in Cold War-style campaigns. The balloon launches And Campaign broadcasts.
Bloody and violent clashes occurred periodically along Korea’s heavily fortified border, known as the Demilitarized Zone. Although Sunday’s incident comes amid heightened tensions between the two Koreas, observers say it will not escalate into another escalation of hostilities, as South Korea believes the North Koreans did not make a deliberate cross-border intrusion and that the North did not open fire.
At 12:30 p.m. Sunday, some North Korean soldiers on an unspecified mission on the northern side of the border crossed the military demarcation line that separates the two countries, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said.
After South Korea’s military fired warning shots and issued warning broadcasts, North Korean soldiers carrying construction equipment – some of them armed – immediately returned to their area, joint chiefs said. It said North Korea had not carried out any other suspicious activities.
The South Korean military estimated that the North Korean soldiers did not appear to have crossed the border intentionally because the area was a wooded area where MDL signs were not clear, Joint Chiefs of Staff spokesman Lee Sung Joon told reporters.
Lee did not provide further details. But South Korean media reports say about 20-30 North Korean soldiers entered the South Korean border about 50 meters (165 feet) after losing their way. Reports suggest that most of the North Korean soldiers carried pickaxes and other construction tools.
The 248-kilometer (155-mi)-long, 4-kilometer (2.5-mi)-wide DMZ is the world’s most heavily armed border. About 2 million mines are buried in and near the border, which is guarded by barbed wire fences, tank traps and combat troops on both sides. This is a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean War, which ended with an armistice, not a peace treaty.
On Sunday, South Korea resumed anti-Pyongyang propaganda broadcasts from its border loudspeakers in response to the North’s latest launch of balloons carrying fertilizer and garbage over its border. South Korea reported North Korea has installed loudspeakers on its own border Answer but haven’t run them yet.
North Korea said its balloon campaign was in response to South Korean activists launching their own balloons with propaganda leaflets critical of leader Kim Jong Un’s authoritarian rule, K-pop songs and South Korean drama performances, among other items. North Korea.
Because most of its 26 million people have no official access to foreign news, North Korea is extremely sensitive to any outside criticism of its political system. On Sunday night, Kim’s sister and a senior official, Kim Yo Jong, warned of “a new response” if South Korea continues its loudspeaker broadcasts and refuses to stop public leafleting campaigns.
Tide-for-tat over speakers and balloons — both Cold War-style psychological warfare — have deepened tensions between the Koreas as talks over the North’s nuclear ambitions have stalled for years.
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