North Korea after giving a rare apology is now back to normal warning the ROK to stop violating the NLL. This is standard stuff for the North Koreans who have their own version of the NLL you can see below in Red:
North Korea warned the South on Sunday to stop violating the Northern Limit Line (NLL), the de facto inter-Korean maritime border in the Yellow Sea, as the search continues for the body of a South Korean fisheries official shot last Tuesday.
Joong Ang Ilbo
South Korea’s Navy and Coast Guard however said that they have been searching for the body of the 47-year-old official surnamed Lee — who was shot and killed by North Korean soldiers last Tuesday after he mysteriously went missing the previous day — in waters south of the NLL.
Pyongyang’s warning came two days after an apology from North Korea Friday claiming that the man’s body had been lost at sea after he was shot, rather than burned, as initially reported by the South’s military.
The North’s official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported in an English-language dispatch Sunday, “We can never overlook any intrusion into our territorial waters and we seriously warn the south side against it.”
The North urged South Korean authorities to “immediately halt the intrusion across the military demarcation line in the west sea that may lead to escalation of tensions.”
The North may be referring to the West Sea military demarcation line (MDL), a line south of the NLL in the Yellow Sea that Pyongyang unilaterally declared in 1999. North Korean has long disputed the NLL, which was set by the United Nations Command (UNC) in 1953 after the three-year Korean War ended in a ceasefire.
You can read more at the link.
Somebody had to be held responsible for this dereliction of duty and it ended up being a ROK Marine Corps 2-Star General:
The border crossing near the western island of Ganghwa by the 24-year-old man, surnamed Kim, became known after North Korea reported Sunday that a “runaway” returned home in the border city of Kaesong with coronavirus symptoms and that the entire city was blocked off to prevent the spread of the virus.
South Korean officials said Kim had been under investigation over allegations he raped a female defector.
According to the JCS’ probe results, Kim was caught on the military’s surveillance equipment seven times — five on its monitoring cameras, twice on thermal observation devices (TODs) — including his arrival in the North, but troops failed to identify him as a person trying to cross the border.
The defector passed through a drainage tunnel running underneath barbed wire fences to evade South Korean border guards before reaching the shore and swimming a few kilometers to North Korea.
The fences set up inside the drainage tunnel were in poor condition, allowing the defector to pass through them easily, they said. It took just around 10 minutes for Kim to pass through the channel and reach the river separating the two Koreas.
The JCS will seek disciplinary measures against those accountable, including the dismissal of Maj. Gen. Baek Gyeong-sun as commander of the Marine Corps’ 2nd Division in charge of border security at the area, officials said.
Yonhap
You can read more at the link.
I doubt anyone who follows inter-Korean issues ever expected this to last very long:
North Korea appears to have dispatched soldiers to some empty guard posts inside the Demilitarized Zone, sources said Thursday, following its warnings that it would beef up its military presence in border areas.
On Wednesday, the General Staff of the (North) Korean People’s Army vowed to set up “civil police posts,” which had been withdrawn from the DMZ under an inter-Korean military agreement, as part of next steps against South Korea after the demolition of the inter-Korean liaison office in the border town of Kaesong.
According to the military sources, several soldiers were spotted being dispatched to empty sentry posts inside the buffer zone from late Wednesday.
North Korea is believed to have around 150 such posts, and some of them were vacated in accordance with the inter-Korean tension-reducing pact signed in Sept. 19, 2018.
Yonhap
You can read more at the link.
Does anyone believe this excuse from the ROK military that the North Koreans unintentionally fired at a guard post because of the fog?:
Several gunshots from North Korea hit a South Korean guard post inside the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) on Sunday, prompting the South to fire back, but the North’s firings do not appear to have been intentional, an official said.
South Korean soldiers on guard duty at the unit in the central border town of Cheorwon heard gunshots at around 7:41 a.m. and found four bullet marks on a wall of the guard post, according to the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
In accordance with the response manual, the military then fired a total of 20 shots in response — 10 rounds each time — and issued broadcast warnings, it added. No casualties or damage to South Korean facilities were reported.
It is not known if North Korea sustained any damage.
“We also sent a notice to the North Korean side via the inter-Korean communication line at around 9:35 a.m., and called for its explanation,” a JCS officer said.
North Korea has given no response yet.
The military is closely looking into the incident to learn more details by analyzing pieces of evidence, including shells found at the scene, as well as the North’s motivations for the firing. It does not appear to be an intentional provocation, according to the officer.
“It was quite foggy and the North Korean soldiers usually rotate shifts around that time,” the JCS officer said, adding that no unusual movements by the North’s military have been detected.
Yonhap
You can read more at the link, but the only way I can see the fog being a factor is that a North Korean soldier tripped over something and did not have his weapon on safe and it just happened to hit the ROK guard post. And this just happened to occur a day after Kim Jong-un made his first appearance in 20 days.
1969 began as a particularly deadly year for U.S. troops in South Korea. In January an EC-121 intelligence gathering plane was shot down over international airspace by a North Korean MIG jet that killed 31 American servicemembers. The deadly attack was just one of many from this time period has been called “DMZ War“. North Korea continued its DMZ War when in on October 18, 1969 it ambushed a U.S. Army truck traveling near the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) killing 4 U.S. Soldiers.
The four U.S. Soldiers from the 7th Infantry Division were traveling in a truck marked with a white flag and labeled with a sign that said “DMZ Police” when they were ambushed by a North Korean patrol with rifle fire and grenades. The North Koreans then went up to the truck and shot each soldier in the head at close range to ensure they were dead. The ambush killed Staff Sergeant James R. Grissinger, Specialist Charles E. Taylor, Specialist Jack L. Morris, and Private First Class William E. Grimes.
Following the attack U.S. and ROK troops patrolled the area in an attempt to locate the intruders. Four North Korean commandoes were spotted and engaged by a U.S. patrol. However, the commandoes successfully escaped back across the DMZ into North Korea with no casualties. Three days later the four soldiers were remembered during a ceremony prior to their honor flight back home.
Few know or remember this period of increased North Korean attacks that killed and wounded hundreds of U.S. soldiers who served on the DMZ. The U.S. and ROK military’s success in the DMZ War had important strategic consequences that unfortunately the four 7th Infantry Division soldiers killed in the truck ambush would never live to see.
For more DMZ Flashpoints articles please click the below link:
