Brief exchange of shells over the western part of the two Koreas border 12008154

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Defence & Security News - Sourh Korea
 
Brief exchange of shells over the western part of the two Koreas border.
The two Koreas engaged in a brief exchange of shells over the western part of their heavily-fortified border Thursday, August 20, 2015, escalating tensions following the North's recent landmine attack on the South side. The South Korean military's radar system detected North Korea firing a shell toward a South Korean front-line military unit in Yeoncheon, Gyeonggi Province, northwest of Seoul, at 3:52 p.m., the Ministry of National Defense said.
     
The two Koreas engaged in a brief exchange of shells over the western part of their heavily-fortified border Thursday, August 20, 2015, escalating tensions following the North's recent landmine attack on the South side. The South Korean military's radar system detected North Korea firing a shell toward a South Korean front-line military unit in Yeoncheon, Gyeonggi Province, northwest of Seoul, at 3:52 p.m., the Ministry of National Defense said. South Korean Army soldiers work on their K-9 self-propelled artillery howitzer during an exercise against possible attacks by North Korea near the border village of Panmunjom in Paju, South Korea, Monday, March 11, 2013.
     

In response, South Korea fired back dozens of 155-millimeter shells at the point where the North fired the shell at 5:04 p.m., the ministry noted.

"Our military's sensor system detected the North firing a shell suspected to be from a rocket launcher at the town of Jungmyeon, Yeoncheon," a ministry official said.

The brief engagement ended without further development with no damage of any kind to the Southern side reported as the shell landed on a uninhabited hill, he said.

Last October, the North fired about 10 shells to the same area after South Korean activists launched its campaign to send balloons, filled with anti-Pyongyang propaganda leaflets, into the North Korean side