South Korea's military said Tuesday that its troops fired warning shots after North Korean troops crossed the land border earlier this week.
South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff reported that some North Korean soldiers engaged in unspecified activities on the North Korean side briefly crossed the military demarcation line on Sunday. After South Korean forces fired warning shots and made a warning broadcast, the North Korean soldiers returned to their own territory.
The Joint Chiefs of Staff also said North Korea had not engaged in any other suspicious activity.
The mine-riddled border between North and South Korea is the most heavily guarded in the world, with hundreds of thousands of combat troops stationed on both sides – a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean War, which ended with an armistice rather than a peace treaty.
The border incident comes amid heightened tensions over North Korea's recent launches of waste-laden balloons.
North Korea sends trash balloons to South Korea
Earlier this week, North Korea released hundreds of balloons filled with garbage across the border, and the two neighboring countries have been conducting balloon attacks for some time, sending trash and propaganda across their heavily guarded border.
After South Korean activists sent balloons filled with propaganda leaflets to North Korea, North Korea also sent balloons filled with garbage.
Origins of the Balloon Wars
The balloon wars began during the Korean War (1950-53) and continued throughout the Cold War, with both North and South Korea using balloons to spread propaganda and psychological messages to each other.
During the Cold War, North and South Korea engaged in a propaganda war, broadcasting anti-government messages and sending balloons filled with leaflets into each other's airspace. The leaflets were often so libelous that both governments banned their citizens from reading them.
Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, as North Korean propaganda lost influence and South Korea's economy prospered, South Korea embraced democracy, but North Korea maintained strict information controls. Despite an agreement in 2000 to end government-sponsored propaganda, defectors and Christian activists in South Korea continued to send balloons carrying Bibles, transistor radios, medicine, and leaflets critical of the North Korean regime.
(With inputs from PTI)
