N Korea fires artillery shells near S Korean islands

SEOUL: North Korea fired an artillery barrage near two South Korean border islands on Friday, Seoul's defence ministry said, prompting a live-fire drill from the South Korean military.

Residents of both islands were ordered to evacuate and ferries were suspended as South Korea held a live-fire exercise after North Korea's barrage -- one of the most serious military escalations on the peninsula since Pyongyang fired shells at one of the same islands in 2010. North Korea's military said it had conducted a naval live-fire drill as a "natural countermeasure" against South Korean threats, according to a statement in the official Korean Central News Agency.

Seoul's defence ministry said North Korea's military fired "over some 200 rounds" of artillery shells on Friday morning near Yeonpyeong and Baengnyeong, two sparsely populated South Korean islands that are just south of a defacto maritime border between the two sides. It said the shells landed in the buffer zone along the border created by a 2018 tension-reducing deal, which fell apart in November after Kim's spy satellite launch.

Resuming artillery fire within the buffer zone "is a provocative act that threatens peace on the Korean Peninsula and escalates tensions", Seoul's defence minister Shin Won-sik said. In response to Pyongyang's actions, Seoul's military will take "immediate, strong, and final retaliation -- we must back peace with overwhelming force", he added.

North Korea's military warned Seoul should not commit "a provocation under the pretext of so-called counteraction", saying that were it to do so, North Korea would "show tough counteraction on an unprecedented level", according to KCNA. "The direction of naval live-shell firing doesn't give even an indirect effect on Baengnyeong and Yeonpyeong islands," it said. Pyongyang's major ally and benefactor China called Friday for "restraint" from all sides.

Yeonpyeong, which has around 2,000 residents, is about 115 kilometres west of South Korea's capital, Seoul. Baengnyeong, with a population of 4,900, is about 210 kilometres west of Seoul. Local officials on both islands said that residents had been told to evacuate, describing the order as a "preventative measure" ahead of the South Korean military drill. The order was lifted hours later, South Korea's Yonhap news agency reported.