Shots Fired at the Border
“Two shots were fired from a North Korean military guard post (GP) toward our GP around 5:26 p.m., and we immediately returned fire with three shots as under the rules of engagement,” the official said. “There was no damage from the North Korean shots.”
The GPs are 1.3 kilometers away from each other. The official said after returning fire, South Korea twice issued warnings that the North had breached the armistice that ended the 1950-53 Korean War. [Yonhap]
Right. Because they wouldn’t have known that otherwise.
“It hasn’t been confirmed whether the North Korean military took an aimed shot,” the official said. “The United Nations Command (UNC) will send a special investigation team to determine whether North Korea had violated terms of the armistice.”
It doesn’t look like there were any casualties, at least on the southern side. The South Koreans forces have gone on alert, just in time to ruin a lot of weekend leaves (sorry, guys). The North Koreans, no doubt, are already at the range for extra marksmanship training. Not that most North Korean soldiers tend to have big weekend plans anyway, given that their main off-post entertainment option is pillaging nearby farms. And hopefully stealing enough corn to trade for some meth.
I think we should remain a little less overly cynical about the soldiers’ conduct, considering we have no idea what they do with their weekends. If I recall correctly, skirmishes such as this have happened relatively often, most of the time not even making headlines. The important thing to remember is the innate tension these soldiers feel facing each other, and also the knowledge that these sorts of things don’t have much of a chance of escalating into anything larger than the north maybe committing a crime, though the south probably won’t retaliate militarily on any sort of large scale. When I break this incident down, I’m led to the conclusion that this is just another run-of-the-mill skirmish with no larger implications. Keep in mind the status of the north’s soldiers, and if they’re pillaging villages for food, it’s most likely out of survival instincts.
Maybe a few North Koreans devote their weekends to Bible study.
@jason, Hungry young men with guns + breakdown of discipline = all bad. At this point with how bad things are, we can only hope they are satisfied with just drugging themselves in a stupor because they are a danger to everyone else.
“Keep in mind the status of the north’s soldiers, and if they’re pillaging villages for food, it’s most likely out of survival instincts.”
Gee, you think?
Hey, where’s Joe?
Does this mean I won our North Korea-will-commit-a-provocation-before-the-end-of-the-year contest? 😉