North Korean chief Kim Jong Un’s sister Kim Yo Jong denied Seoul’s claims that Pyongyang fired dozens of artillery rounds close to their disputed border. South Korean army earlier mentioned that North Korea fired over 60 artillery rounds close to Yeonpyeong Island, a day after either side staged live-fire drills in the identical space which is close to their contested maritime border.
South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff mentioned that the shells landed in a buffer zone which was created below a 2018 tension-reducing deal. It fell aside in November after North Korea launched a spy satellite tv for pc.
But Kim Jong Un’s sister Kim Yo Jong mentioned in a press release carried by the official Korean Central News Agency, “Our army didn’t fireplace a single shell into the water space.”
North Korea had detonated explosives simulating the sound of gunfire 60 instances and “watched the response” of the South Korean forces, she mentioned, including, “The outcome was precisely as we anticipated. They misjudged the sound of explosives as gunfire, assumed it was an artillery fireplace provocation, and shamelessly made up a lie.”
Mocking South Korea, Kim Yo Jong mentioned, “In the longer term, they’ll misjudge even the rumbling sound of thunder within the northern sky as artillery fireplace from our army.”
This comes as residents on two South Korean islands close to the border had been ordered to evacuate. Relations between the 2 Koreas are at one in every of their lowest factors in a long time after chief Kim Jong Un enshrined his nation’s standing as a nuclear energy into the structure. North Korea additionally test-fired a number of superior ICBMs final yr as Kim Jong Un threatened a nuclear assault on the South and known as for a build-up of his nation’s army as battle might “escape any time”, he mentioned.