North Korea announced Wednesday it had fired artillery shells off its east and west coasts the previous night to "send a serious warning" to South Korea, which conducted artillery fire Tuesday, according to the country's official media.
The South Korean military's Joint Chiefs of Staff said early Wednesday Pyongyang fired a total of some 250 artillery rounds from 10pm Tuesday, and that they splashed into maritime buffer zones established under a 2018 inter-Korean agreement on reducing military tension. None of them fell into the territorial waters of the South, it added.
A spokesman for the General Staff of the Korean People's Army in North Korea said in a statement the artillery fire was "a powerful military countermeasure" to South Korea's firing of dozens of rounds from multiple rocket launchers in an area along the Military Demarcation Line, the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said.
"The enemy's war drill" against the North is "going on in a frantic manner," the KCNA quoted the unnamed spokesman as saying. He called on Seoul to "immediately stop the reckless and inciting provocations which are escalating military tensions in the forefront area."
The JCS has urged Pyongyang to immediately halt its actions. About 100 rounds were fired from Hwanghae Province toward the Yellow Sea with a further 150 coming from Kangwon Province toward the Sea of Japan, it added.
The South Korean military began Monday a field training exercise involving US forces in the country.
The latest barrage comes after the North fired artillery shells into coastal waters last Friday, which was also purported to be a "countermeasure" to South Korean artillery fire earlier that day.
North Korea has recently been test-firing ballistic missiles at an increased rate, and speculation has been growing that it could conduct what would be its seventh nuclear test and first since September 2017.
