The exercise will last four days as part of larger annual ongoing Hoguk drills that run from October 18-28. The exercise in the Yellow Sea aims to enhance the military’s combined and joint maritime operational capabilities against foreign provocations with a focus on improving capabilities of maritime counter special operation forces and responses to North Korea’s provocations near the Northern Limit Line (NLL), de facto inter-Korean maritime border, the report said.
The exercise involves more than 20 warships, including destroyers and frigates equipped with the Aegis combat information and control system, helicopters, F-15K and F-16 fighter jets, as well as A-10 Thunderbolt aircraft of the US Air Force.
The South Korean military said on Monday morning that it fired about 20 warning shots at a North Korean ship that crossed the NLL near the island of Baengnyeongdo at 03:42 a.m. local time (18:42 GMT on Sunday). Meanwhile, the North Korean military said that a South Korean warship violated the western sea border by 2.5-5 kilometers (1.5-3 miles) around the same time and therefore was subjected to fire.
Seoul has repeatedly warned Pyongyang that artillery shelling within buffer zones in the Sea of Japan and the Yellow Sea is a clear violation of the 2018 inter-Korean military agreement.
The inter-Korean military agreement was signed at the summit between the leaders of the two countries in September 2018. The agreement was aimed at preventing military confrontation on the Korean Peninsula and in particular, established buffer zones based on the Military Demarcation Line on land and on the NLL at sea.