S. Korea Resumes Border Artillery Drills on Land for 1st Time in 6 Years

Seoul, South Korea resumed live-fire exercises at artillery ranges near the border with North Korea on Tuesday for the first time in six years, following the suspension of an inter-Korean tension-reduction pact that restricted such drills.South Korea's News Agency (Yonhap) quoted sources in the south army as saying that troops fired some 140 rounds using the K9 and K105A1 self-propelled howitzers during the drills at front-line ranges in the provinces of Gyeonggi and Gangwon.The move came nearly a month after South Korea fully suspended the 2018 inter-Korean military agreement on June 4 in the wake of North Korea's trash balloon campaigns and attempts to disrupt GPS signals near border islands.The suspension enabled South Korea to resume drills to bolster front-line defenses. Previously, artillery and naval drills, as well as regiment-level field maneuvers, were banned due to land and maritime buffer zones set up in the area. No-fly zones had also been designated near the border to prevent accidental ai rcraft clashes.Last week, the Marine Corps resumed a full-scale live-fire exercise, involving K9 howitzers and Chunmoo multiple rocket launcher systems, for the first time in seven years on islands near the tensely guarded western inter-Korean maritime border.Source: Qatar News Agency