Nutty North Korea fires artillery near inter-Korean maritime border

Nutty North Korea fired about 110 rounds of artillery Monday near its disputed sea border with South Korea, the South's military said, amid high tension over the deadly sinking of the South Korean Corvette Cheonan blamed on North Korea.

The firing came shortly after South Korea ended five-day naval drills off the west coast that the North called a rehearsal for an invasion, vowing to retaliate.

About 10 shells landed near the South Korean border island of Byeongryeong, followed by an additional 100 rounds falling near another border island, Yeonpyeong, said a spokesman of the Office of Joint Chiefs of Staff in Seoul

A North Korea’s shore battery reportedly opened fire around 1730 local time (0830 GMT).

Personnel on South Korean Navy ships and Marines based on the islands saw columns of sea water spouting up after the shells struck.

The waters around the two islands were the site of three recent naval skirmishes between the Koreas — in 1999, 2002 and last November. In March, an explosion struck the Cheonan, a 1,200-ton South Korean Navy Corvette, in those waters, and the ship went down, killing 46 sailors. Strains in the North-South relationship deepened when international investigators fixed blame on the North.

And on Sunday, North Korean authorities seized four South Korean and three Chinese fishermen aboard a 41-ton South Korean fishing boat, the Daeseung for an alleged violation of the North's exclusive economic zone. South Korea has demanded the North quickly release them but the North has not responded.

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South Korea considered the firing to be part of a military drill by North Korea but still bolstered its military readiness against further provocation, the officer said. The South also warned Pyongyang over the firing by naval radio.

All the artillery shells harmlessly landed into the North's waters and caused no damage to the South, a South Korean Joint Chief of Staff officer said.

"This was their way of saying 'We'll respond to military drills with military drills,'" said Yang Moo-jin, a professor at Seoul's University of North Korean studies.

Yang said the firing is also aimed at highlighting the instability of the Korean peninsula to apply pressure on the United States to start talks on the signing of a peace treaty to formally end the 1950-53 Korean War. The conflict ended with an armistice, thus leaving the peninsula technically at state of war.