Sunday Times 2
Kim guides military drill near sea border with S. Korea
View(s):SEOUL, Feb 21 (AFP) -North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-Un has guided a military drill simulating an attack and seizure of a frontline South Korean island, Pyongyang’s state media said Saturday.
The drill came as tensions grow ahead of an annual US-South Korea joint Key Resolve/Foal Eagle military exercise that is reportedly to start early next month.
Artillery units were among the troops taking part in the drill on the islets of Mu and Jangjae “in the biggest hotspot in the southernmost part of southwestern front”, Pyongyang’s Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said.
The defence detachment on Mu Islet shelled South Korea’s Yeonpyeong island in 2010 in an angry reaction to a firing drill conducted by the South near the disputed sea border in the Yellow Sea, killing four South Koreans.
Kim Jong-Un in 2012 visited Mu and Jangjae, honouring the troops on Mu Islet with the title of “Hero Defence Detachment”. He made two more trips to the frontline islands in 2013 and threatened to “wipe out” Yeonpyeong Island and other South Korean islands near the border.
South Korea’s Yonhap news agency, citing an unidentified government official, said the live-fire drill had taken place on Friday.