South Korea conducts largest-ever artillery drill to check North Korean provocations

South Korea's military said Thursday that it has carried out the largest-ever artillery drill near the tense inter-Korean border to demonstrate its determination to retaliate against future provocations, the Korean news agency Yonhap reported.

The military drills took place in the afternoon, one day before South Korea marks the first anniversary of the North's shelling of areas south of the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) that separates the two Koreas.

"Some 300 artillery pieces from 49 artillery battalions took part in the live-fire exercise. The K-9 and K-55 self-propelled howitzers attended the drills that kicked off at around 5:00 p.m.," the Ministry of National Defense (MND) said in a statement. 

In August last year, the two Koreas traded fire, an exchange triggered by North Korea's artillery attack in the DMZ.

In the latest military show of force, the Army's Arthur-K radar simulated detecting the "origin of incoming enemy artillery rounds" and sending the information to three artillery battalions, which struck the simulated Northern artillery site with K-9s and K-55s, the ministry said.

Moreover, an unmanned aerial vehicle was sent into the air to provide real-time damage assessments on the enemy side allowing military officers to decide whether to launch another attack to destroy the enemy's offensive capabilities, it said.

Last year's artillery shelling by the North was an extension of its provocations in August last year. Two South Korean soldiers were seriously injured -- one lost both legs and the other lost one -- in a North Korean land-mine attack on Aug. 4.

As Seoul resumed propaganda loudspeaker broadcasts at the border in retaliation for the explosion, tensions on the Korean Peninsula soared, which led to the artillery exchange.

On Aug. 25, the two Koreas reached a deal to defuse tensions after Seoul promised to suspend the loudspeaker campaign in return for Pyongyang's expression of regret over the land mines.

Source: MENA