The South Korean fired warning shots Tuesday at an "unidentified object" flying across the heavily fortified border from North Korea Tuesday afternoon according to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The military detected the object traversing the Military Demarcation Line (MDL) southward in the Chorwon area in the eastern province of Gangwon at around 4 pm.
South Korean army's K-55 self-propelled howitzers fire during the annual exercise in Paju, near the border with North Korea on Monday, May 22.
According to Yonhap News, a defense source said the military fired more than 90 K-3 machine gun rounds, adding it may have been a drone. The South's military is analyzing the object and its route and has beefed up its air defense posture, said the JCS. The incident added to already-high tensions between the Koreas following the North's continued ballistic missile launches.
In January last year, a North Korean drone flew over the MDL into the western section of the demilitarized zone. The South opened machine gun fire on it.
South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement that the South Korean military bolstered its air surveillance and broadcast a warning to North Korea in response to the object. It provided no other details.
The Koreas face off across the world's most heavily armed border, and the two sides occasionally clash. In 2014, they traded machine gun and rifle fire after South Korean activists released anti-North Korean propaganda balloons across the Demilitarized Zone that bisects the Korean Peninsula, but no casualties were reported. Attacks blamed on North Korea in 2010 killed 50 South Koreans.