The new year is one after another, and the time has come to the fifth day.
From 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. on 5 January, the DPRK army fired coastal artillery at Yeonpyeong Island on the western coast of the DPRK and the ROK, and 47 coastal guns fired 192 shells within two hours.
Beginning at 3 p.m. on the same day, the 6th Marine Brigade and Yeonpyeong troops stationed on Baeknyeong Island in the northwest and Yeonpyeong Island used K9 self-propelled guns and tank guns to conduct naval firing training.
Therefore, the incident itself is very simple, the DPRK and the ROK have opened artillery in a two-way "no man's land", but what is the background of this incident? Is it the beginning of the New Year, and the DPRK army is celebrating with "artillery battles" on the front line?
From December 29 to January 4, 2023, the United States and South Korea dispatched a total of 110 weapons and equipment, including A-19 fighter jets, K1A2 tanks and a large number Xi of armored equipment, including A-19 fighter jets and K1A2 tanks, in Pocheon, Gyeonggi Province, near the "38th parallel".
Not only that, from January 1 to 2, the ROK Army conducted large-scale artillery Xi exercises in many places near the demarcation line, and on January 3, the ROK Navy dispatched a number of destroyers, frigates, and missile boats to carry out naval gun firing and sea maneuver Xi exercises in the waters around the peninsula. What's more, South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol said in his 2024 New Year's address that North Korea's nuclear and missile threat would be "blocked at the source" this year.
All of this shows that South Korea's stance is still very firm in the new year, so when two enemies run to their doorstep and dance guns and sticks, and foam flying, let North Korea stick his head in his crotch and learn from the ostrich? At the end of last year, the DPRK side directly made clear its stance: "The DPRK-ROK relations are no longer relations of the same race, but completely hostile relations." How can we understand this sentence? To put it bluntly, the DPRK has already begun preparations for war.
Although since the 1953 Korean War armistice agreement, the two Koreas have not triggered large-scale wars, but there are indeed a lot of local hot wars, in 2010 in the "Yeonpyeong Island firefight", the North Korean side also fired more than 200 shells, of which about 60 hit Yeonpyeong Island, allegedly caused a number of buildings to catch fire, 4 dead, 7 injured, and the cause of the incident is also South Korea-US joint military exercises, so in comparison, this artillery battle is somewhat restrained.
At the same time, it can also be realized that the sea area in the western part of the peninsula seems to be more uncertain and has more room for maneuver than the cautiousness near the 38th parallel, and this is exactly the case, which has basically triggered the inter-Korean conflict in recent decades, and this sea area is the introduction of the explosive barrel of the Korean peninsula.
There is a line called the "Northern Limit", which is the maritime demarcation line drawn by the ROK between the "five islands in the West Sea", including Yeonpyeong Island, and the western coast of Korea, but it should be noted that this boundary is not explicitly included in the "Korean Armistice Agreement" and has never been recognized by the DPRK, and the latter has also drawn a "southern warning line".
In recent years, the two Koreas have engaged in a number of military clashes near this line, including the First Battle of Yeonpyeong in 1999, the Second Battle of Yeonpyeong in 2002, the Cheonan incident in 2010, and the artillery battle on Yeonpyeong Island.
In the first Battle of Yeonpyeong, which lasted only 14 minutes, it was rumored that North Korea had lost at least 30 dead in this battle, 1 torpedo boat was sunk, and 5 ships were heavily damaged, while South Korea only had 11 soldiers wounded and 2 ships damaged, and South Korea won.
In the Cheonan incident, the "Cheonan," a Pohang-class corvette belonging to the Pohang, was the absolute main force of the ROK corvette in those years, although its tonnage was average, but it was relatively modern, and it was the absolute main force of the ROK corvette in those years, but the result sank for no apparent reason, and it also took the lives of 46 officers and men.
In the shelling of Yeonpyeong Island, South Korea not only suffered a big loss, but also made an international joke. When the South Korean army fired the K-9 self-propelled howitzer, it actually calculated the enemy's position from a height of 10 meters to 100 meters, and the result was a random call, let's listen to the explanation of the person in charge at the time: "The North Korean firing cannon was fired at an altitude of 10 meters, but we calculated it to be 100 meters, so the shell fell behind the origin."
Perhaps after the 2010 Cheonan incident and the bombing of Yeonpyeong Island, South Korea's mentality has been distorted, and it needs to keep getting closer to the United States for comfort.
There are too many uncertainties in 2024, and Iran will not be able to say that it will really end, and it is not impossible for the peninsula to fight again.