• North Korea again fired artillery shells near its tense sea boundary with the South in another escalation of tension.

• Earlier, North Korea fired more than 200 artillery rounds near a disputed maritime border with South Korea. 

• Artillery rounds were fired near Yeonpyeong and Baengnyeong, two sparsely populated islands situated just south of a de-facto maritime border between the two sides.

• North Korea’s artillery firings prompted South Korea to have its troops on border islands fire artillery rounds near the sea boundary in response. 

• The exchange led residents of two remote South Korean islands on the western maritime frontier to evacuate to bomb shelters at the instruction of the South’s military, before it fired live rounds towards the disputed Northern Limit Line (NLL) border.

• The shells launched by the two Koreas fell at a maritime buffer zone they had established under a 2018 military agreement on lowering front-line military tensions.

• The firing by North Korea caused no civilian or military damage in the South.

• The North Korean artillery shells all landed on the northern side of the sea border.

• South Korea’s Yeonpyeong Island is situated in the Yellow Sea. It is located approximately 80 kilometres west of Incheon and 12 kilometres south of the coastline of Hwanghae Province, North Korea.

• Yeonpyeong is home to just over 2,000 residents and troops stationed there, about 120 km west of Seoul and accessed by ferries that take more than 2.5 hours.

• Authorities on Baengnyeong Island also reported an evacuation order there.

• Baengnyeong island lies far to the west of Yeonpyeong and is also near the sea border. Its population is about 4,900.

Northern Limit Line

• The two Koreas remain technically at war because the 1950-53 conflict ended in an armistice, not a treaty, and most of the border between them is heavily fortified, with their contested maritime border never officially delineated.

• Drawn up at the end of the Korean War as an unofficial border, North Korea did not dispute the Northern Limit Line (NLL) until in the 1970s, when it began violating the line and arguing for a border further to the south.

• The waters near the disputed NLL have been the site of several deadly clashes between the North and South Korea including battles involving warships and the sinking of a South Korean corvette in 2010 by what is believed to be a North Korean torpedo, killing 46 sailors.

• In November 2010, North Korean artillery fired several dozen rounds at Yeonpyeong island, killing two soldiers and two civilians, in one of the heaviest attacks on its neighbour since the Korean War ended in 1953.

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