In a significant escalation of hostilities, North and South Korea have fired several missiles into waters adjacent to each other’s shores.
At least 23 missiles were launched by the North in a single day, with one landing less than 60 kilometers (37 miles) from the city of Sokcho in the South.
Three air-to-ground missiles were fired by Seoul’s warplanes across the contested maritime delimitation line in retaliation for the attack.
Later, Pyongyang launched a further six missiles and 100 artillery rounds.
The North claims the launches are in response to the “aggressive and provocative” large-scale military drills that South Korea and the United States are now conducting.
Tuesday, Pyongyang threatened that they would pay “the most horrifying price in history” if they maintained their joint military exercises, which were seen as a threat to use nuclear weapons. As tensions have escalated this year, North Korea has conducted a record number of missile tests.
Wednesday’s confrontations began with Pyongyang firing missiles into waters close to South Korea, setting off air raid sirens on Ulleung, an island administered by Seoul. The locals were instructed to evacuate underground bunkers.
One ballistic missile crossed the Northern Limit Line (NLL), the contested maritime border between North and South Korea.
It fell outside of South Korean territorial waters, yet this is the closest a North Korean missile has ever come to South Korea.
Seoul referred to it as an “unacceptable” violation of its land.
Officials from the South said that the air-to-ground missiles launched by their military landed a comparable distance beyond the NLL off the coast of the North.
The debuts coincide with a period of national mourning in South Korea in the wake of a weekend crowd crush in Seoul that claimed the lives of more than 150 individuals.
At first, South Korean military sources stated that the North Korean missile shot over the NLL was one of at least 10 launched in both the east and west on Wednesday morning.
Later, they revised the number of North Korean missile launches for the day to 23, including seven short-range ballistic missiles and sixteen additional missiles, including six surface-to-air missiles.
The closest missile to South Korea was launched before 09:00 (00:00 GMT) and landed 26 kilometers south of the de facto border, 57 kilometers east of the coastal town of Sokcho, and 167 kilometers north-west of Ulleung island.
South Korean and Japanese authorities picked up on the launch instantly and strongly condemned Pyongyang’s aggression.
South Korea’s military stated that this was the first time since the partition of the Korean peninsula after the 1950-1953 Korean War that a ballistic missile had “landed south of the NLL near our territorial waters.”
Even though the missile landed outside South Korean territorial seas, President Yoon Suk-yeol, who has made it his mission to take a hard stance against North Korea, called it an “effective territorial invasion” and vowed a “quick and robust response.”
Under international law, a nation’s territorial claim may extend no further than 12 nautical miles from its coast.
In 2022, North Korea has already launched more than 50 missiles from the Korean Peninsula, including one that flew over Japan, and tensions are escalating.
A US nuclear-powered submarine arrived off the coast of South Korea on Monday to participate in the most recent of a series of joint US-South Korean drills that began in August.
The drills, dubbed “Vigilant Storm,” are the largest that Seoul and Washington have ever conducted, involving hundreds of military aircraft from both countries.
