Kim Jong Un
Fire exchange
More than 100 North Korean shells out of 500 or so fired landed in South Korean waters, prompting marines from the South to fire back with more than 300 rounds in the North's waters, defense officials in Seoul said.
Seoul also scrambled F-15s on its side of the maritime border, they said.
"We believe the North's maritime firing is a planned provocation and an attempt to test our military's determination to defend the Northern Limit Line and to get an upper hand in South-North relations," South Korean Defence Ministry spokesman Kim Min-seok said.
Read more here and watch the video. Recommend this post
Using a video still from a combined US/South Korean Military Exercise, with that label, is a little "propagandistic",
ReplyDeleteNorth Korean Costal Defence artillery firing into disputed South Korean waters, and the South Koreans firing back into North Korean waters is not much of an "act of war", more like setting off firecrackers to chase away a dragon, and is a much lower level of exchange than when they fires at each other's bases.
North Korea is just, in their typical manner of bravado, highlighting the dispute over the Northern Line Of Control, in which, North Korea has a reasonable claim. These sort of disputes, would normally be settled by an International Commission, but, won't work in the case, because the Korean War, never ended.
The North Korean missile "tests" and this gunfire, is all eminently predictable, as it happens just before, during and after, the US and South Korean Military conduct large scale Air/Land, or in this case, Air/Land/Sea exercises close to the DMZ.
Jay Farquharson, you sound quite knowledgeable on this. I agree with you.
ReplyDeleteHowever, North Korean leader is a very erratic person - hanging his own uncle who was his mentor, executing his ex-girlfriend and few others that he felt threatened. Power has gone into his head a little too much.
Stalinist Purges have body counts, Harper does the same, just with out the deaths, but then, the ground rules in North Korea are much more severe. Still, at least the propaganda that he fed his Uncle, alive to 100 starving dogs no longer has traction anymore.
ReplyDeleteKim is not very dangerous, all told. He cannot overturn the NLC with force, and the US and South Korea have refused to negotiate the issue, so all he can do is keep the issue alive and on the table with provocations.
Kim's primitive nukes, are only capable of preventing Regime Change, and his rust clad Soviet Heavy Army is only capable of making the use of conventional forces in Regime Change a very expensive option. To keep his Regime alive, he is willing to starve many of his people to death, but then, we were willing to do the same thing to the Iraqi people, to try to topple Saddam.
There is too much invested in the status quo, both in North Korea, and the US and South Korean Military industrial complexes, for things to change, much.
The loose cannon in the area is the re-militarising and Nationalistic Japan.
That, and Climate Change.