North Korea Fires Artillery Again Over South’s Drills

North Korea on Tuesday fired a barrage of artillery rounds into waters near rival South Korea for the second consecutive day in a tit-for-tat response for the South’s live-fire drills in an inland border region.

South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said it detected North Korea firing around 90 artillery rounds from a front-line area along its eastern coast around 10 a.m. It said the shells, which were likely from multiple rocket launchers, landed in the northern side of a maritime buffer zone the Koreas established in 2018 to reduce border tensions.

The firings came shortly after the North Korean People’s Army’s General Staff said it instructed front-line units to launch artillery into the sea as a warning following South Korean artillery exercises in a region near their land border.

The latest North Korean military action has worsened animosity between the rivals, whose relations have sharply declined amid a prolonged pause in nuclear negotiations between Washington and Pyongyang.

Experts say North Korea hopes to negotiate economic and security concessions from a position of strength and force the United States to accept it as a nuclear power. South Korean officials have said North Korea might up the ante soon by conducting its first nuclear test since 2017.