2024 began with the sound of cannon fire on the Korean peninsula, following in the footsteps of the previous year. 2023 was marked by an escalation in tensions that South Korean Unification Minister Kim Yung Ho attributed, on Saturday, January 6, to the North's desire to "divert the population's discontent to economic problems."

The previous day, Matthew Miller, spokesperson for the US State Department, was quoted by South Korea's Yonhap news agency as saying that the United States had "no hostile intentions" towards North Korea. Washington called on Pyongyang "to refrain from further provocative, destabilizing actions and return to diplomacy" in order to discuss "ways to manage military risks and create lasting peace on the Korean Peninsula."

Miller was speaking after intense exchanges of fire in the Yellow Sea. On Friday, North Korea fired 192 shells from the Jangsan and Deungsan capes in the southwest of the country, which landed in the buffer zone north of the Northern Limit Line (NLL), the de facto inter-Korean border in the Yellow Sea. This zone has been the scene of several clashes in the past, notably when North Korea bombed the nearby South Korean island of Yeonpyeong in 2010, killing four people. On Saturday, North Korea conducted another round of artillery drills near the disputed sea boundary with South Korea.

The gunfire this Friday prompted Seoul to issue alerts not only in Yeonpyeong, but also in Baengnyeong, also next door to the NLL, so that residents could seek shelter. Shipping services were briefly suspended. On Friday afternoon, South Korean troops based on both islands retaliated by firing K9 howitzers and K1E1 tanks in the waters south of the NLL, still in the buffer zone.

The North Korean army later denied having targeted the islands of Yeonpyeong and Baengnyeong. For the North, Friday's exercise was "a sort of natural countermeasure" after recent artillery fire by South Korea's "military gangsters." On Thursday, the South Korean and US military conducted a joint live-fire exercise near the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) separating the two Koreas.

The North's firing coincided with the announcement, on the same day, of a visit by leader Kim Jong Un to a mobile missile launcher factory. He called for their production to be stepped up in the event of "a military confrontation" with South Korea and the United States. Reacting to these events, China, which is close to North Korea, called for "calm and restraint" from all sides.

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