South Korea resumed live-fire exercises at artillery ranges near the border with North Korea on Tuesday for the first time in six years, Yonhap News Agency reported. The firing drills included 140 rounds at front-line ranges in the provinces of Gyeonggi and Gangwon, located within 5 km of the Military Demarcation Line within the Demilitarized Zone separating the two Koreas, the army said.
"The Army will regularly conduct artillery drills and training of maneuvering units in border areas going forward," it added. This move came nearly a month after South Korea fully suspended the 2018 inter-Korean military agreement on June 4 in the wake of North Korea's trash balloon campaigns and attempts to disrupt GPS signals near border islands.
The suspension enabled South Korea to resume drills to bolster front-line defenses while previously all artillery and naval drills, as well as regiment-level field maneuvers were banned, as of now.
North Korea said on Monday that the new Hwasong-11Da-4.5 tactical ballistic missile capable of carrying a super-large warhead were test-fired to verify its flight stability and hit accuracy at the maximum range of 500 km and the minimum range of 90 km. Meanwhile, Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) dismissed on Tuesday North Korea's claim of a successful test-fire of a new missile, pointing out that the second missile flew abnormally and appeared to have fallen in a field in an uninhabited area close to Pyongyang.
South Korea's military earlier said it had detected two ballistic missile launches, with one of them flying some 600 km before landing in waters off the North's eastern coast, and the other traveling only about 120 km, raising the possibility of a failure. (end) mk.ao
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