North Korea says artillery ready to ‘open fire’ on South

The North Korean military has ordered frontline artillery units to “get fully ready to open fire” on South Korea after drones from the South allegedly dropped propaganda leaflets over Pyongyang, the state-run KCNA news agency reported on Sunday.

The North Korean government claimed on Friday that the South flew drones carrying propaganda leaflets over the capital on three separate occasions this month, including two flights earlier this week. While North Korea has responded to previous propaganda campaigns by sending balloons filled with rubbish and excrement southwards, the latest incidents warrant a military response, KCNA reported.

“The General Staff of the [Korean People’s Army] issued a preliminary operation order on October 12 to the combined artillery units along the border…to get fully ready to open fire,” the agency wrote, citing the North Korean Defense Ministry.

The order placed “eight artillery brigades fully armed at full wartime strength on standby to open fire,” the report added.

North Korea is believed to have more than 10,000 artillery pieces dug in along its southern border, 6,000 of which are in range of major South Korean population centers, according to a 2020 report by the RAND Corporation, a think tank funded by the US military. If a war broke out between the two Koreas, more than 205,000 people could be killed in Seoul, Incheon, Gimpo, and other South Korean cities within an hour, the RAND report estimated.

In a statement carried by KCNA on Sunday, Kim Yo-jong, the sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, warned that Pyongyang views the South’s “leaflet-scattering” as “a grave politically-motivated provocation and an infringement upon sovereignty.” 

“The moment that a drone of [South Korea] is discovered in the sky over our capital city once again will certainly lead to a horrible disaster,” Kim declared.

South Korean Defense Minister Kim Yong-hyun initially denied sending drones into North Korean airspace. However, the country’s Joint Chiefs of Staff then stated that they “cannot confirm whether the North Korean allegations are true or not.” 

The drone spat came less than a month after North Korea announced that it had tested a new variant of its Hwasong-11 ballistic missile armed with a “super-large” 4.5-ton conventional warhead. This announcement came within weeks of the US and South Korea concluding large-scale military exercises in the region. While Washington and Seoul described the exercises as defensive in nature, the North Korean Foreign Ministry called them “provocative war drills for aggression.”