South Korean troops fire warning shots after North Korean soldiers cross border
South Korean soldiers fired warning shots after North Korean troops briefly violated the tense border earlier this week, South Korea’s military said Tuesday.
SEOUL, South Korea — South Korean soldiers fired warning shots after North Korean troops briefly violated the tense border earlier this week, South Korea’s military said Tuesday, as the rivals are embroiled in Cold War-style campaigns like balloon launches and propaganda broadcasts.
Bloodshed and violent confrontations have occasionally occurred at the Koreas’ heavily fortified border, called the Demilitarized Zone. While Sunday’s incident happened amid simmering tensions between the two Koreas, observers say it is unlikely to develop into another source of animosity as South Korea believes the North Koreans did not deliberately commit the border intrusion and North Korea also did not return fire.
At 12:30 p.m. on Sunday (11:30 p.m. Saturday ET), some North Korean soldiers who were engaged in unspecified work on the northern side of the border crossed the military demarcation line that bisects the two countries, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said.
Those North Korean soldiers carrying construction tools — some of them armed — immediately returned to their territory after South Korea’s military fired warning shots and issued warning broadcasts, the Joint Chiefs of Staff said. It said North Korea had not conducted any other suspicious activities.
South Korea’s military has assessed that the North Korean soldiers did not appear to have intentionally crossed the border because the site is a wooded area and MDL signs there were not clearly visible, Joint Chiefs of Staff spokesperson Lee Sung Joon told reporters.
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