Marine Corps resumes full-scale live-fire drills on border islands for 1st time in 7 years

The Marine Corps on Wednesday resumed a full-scale live-fire exercise on islands near the tensely guarded western inter-Korean maritime border for the first time in seven years.

The resumption came as South Korea fully suspended the 2018 inter-Korean tension reduction accord in early June that calls for banning live-fire drills in waters near the Northern Limit Line (NLL) — the de facto inter-Korean maritime boundary.

The drills, involving various artillery pieces, took place on the islands of Yeonpyeong and Baengnyeong in the Yellow Sea, just south of the NLL.

The preplanned exercise came amid heightened tensions after the North’s launch of a ballistic missile that exploded in midair earlier in the day, according to the South Korean military.

The Marine Corps said its troops fired more than 290 live rounds into waters off the islands during the drills, which involved K9 howitzers, Chunmoo multiple rocket launcher systems and Spike anti-tank missiles.

The Marine Corps last held a full-scale live-fire exercise on the islands in 2017, a year before the two Koreas signed the military accord that set up a maritime buffer zone around the NLL to ban such drills, among other measures, to reduce cross-border tensions.