North Korean artillery carried out barrage fire on Monday (December 5th) in the maritime "
buffer zone
" near the border with South Korea, the South Korean army announced.
The North Korean military simultaneously carried out, at 2:59 p.m. (6:59 a.m. Paris time), around 130 artillery fire from two different sites, one located to the east on the Sea of to the west over the Yellow Sea, the South Korean forces' general staff said in a statement.
A “violation” of the 2018 agreement
The general staff called these shots a "
clear violation
" of the military agreement concluded in 2018 between Seoul and Pyongyang.
This agreement had established a "
buffer zone
" on both sides of the inter-Korean maritime border, where any naval exercise or firing with live ammunition is prohibited in order to reduce the risk of incident.
Read alsoWhy is the shooting intensifying along the maritime border between the two Koreas?
No shells fell on the South Korean side of the border, the general staff said.
Pyongyang has carried out artillery fire towards the "
buffer zone
" on several occasions in recent months, at a time when tensions are at their height on the Korean peninsula.
North Korea has also carried out a record series of missile launches in recent weeks and Seoul and Washington lend it the intention to carry out a nuclear test soon, which would be the seventh in its history and its first since 2017.
Pyongyang, which under UN Security Council resolutions is barred from testing ballistic missiles, says the tests are a response to large-scale military exercises by South Korea, the United States and Japan in the region.
