SEOUL, Jan 5, 2024 (BSS/AFP) - North Korea fired an artillery barrage near

two South Korean border islands Friday, Seoul's defence ministry said,
prompting a live-fire drill by the South's military.

Residents of the two islands were ordered to evacuate to shelters and ferries
were suspended amid one of the most serious military escalations on the
peninsula since Pyongyang fired shells at one of the 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 on the official Korean Central News Agency.

Seoul's defence ministry said the rival military fired more than 200 rounds
of artillery shells near Yeonpyeong and Baengnyeong, two sparsely populated
islands situated just south of a defacto maritime border between the two
sides.

It said the shells landed in a buffer zone created under a 2018 tension-
reducing deal, which fell apart in November after the North launched a spy
satellite.

Resuming artillery fire in 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, 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", according to KCNA. It threatened the
North would "show tough counteraction on an unprecedented level".

It said the shells fired did not even have "an indirect effect" on
Baengnyeong and Yeonpyeong.

Pyongyang's major ally and benefactor China called for "restraint" from all
sides.

- Evacuation orders -

Yeonpyeong, which has around 2,000 residents, is about 115 kilometres (70
miles) west of Seoul. Baengnyeong, with a population of 4,900, is about 210
kilometres west of Seoul.

Local officials said residents had been told to evacuate to shelters as a
"preventative measure" ahead of the South Korean military drill. The order
was lifted hours later, South Korea's Yonhap news agency reported.

One resident of the island said they were "shaking in fear" at the barrage.

"At first I thought it was the shells fired by our own military... but was
told later it was by North Korea," Kim Jin-soo, a Baengnyeong resident told
local broadcaster YTN.

In November, Seoul partially suspended the 2018 military accord to protest
Pyongyang's putting a spy satellite into orbit. The North then scrapped the
deal completely.

"The nullification of the (accord) increases the possibility of military
clashes in the border areas," Yang Moo-jin, president of the University of
North Korean Studies in Seoul, told AFP.

He added that "the evacuation of our residents raises psychological and
security concerns, which can ultimately destabilise the economy of South
Korea".

- 2010 clash -

In 2010, in response to a South Korean live-fire drill near the sea border,
the North bombarded Yeonpyeong island killing four South Koreans -- two
soldiers and two civilians.

That was the first attack on a civilian area since the 1950-53 Korean War.

South Korea returned fire an exchange which lastedmore than an hour, as the
two sides traded more than 200 shells, sparking brief fears of a full-fledged
war.

Relations between the two Koreas are at one of their lowest points in
decades, after the North's leader Kim Jong-Un enshrined the country's status
as a nuclear power into the constitution while test-firing several advanced
inter-continental ballistic missiles.

At year-end policy meetings, Kim warned of a nuclear attack on the South and
called for a build-up of the country's military arsenal, warning that
conflict could "break out any time".

To deter Pyongyang, the United States deployed a nuclear-powered submarine in
the South Korean port city of Busan and flew long-range bombers in drills
with the South and Japan.

North Korea described the deployments as "intentional nuclear war provocative
moves".

On Friday, KCNA said Kim called for the ramping-up of missile launcher
production "given the prevailing grave situation that requires the country to
be more firmly prepared for a military showdown with the enemy."

His comments came after the White House accused North Korea of providing
Russia with ballistic missiles and missile launchers that were used in recent
attacks on Ukraine. Washingon has called this a escalation of Pyongyang's
support for Moscow.