* North Korea fired upto 60 artillery rounds on the North Korean Yeonpyeong lsland on Saturday.
* Both North and South Korea had contested military drills in their maritime border.
* Residents were ordered to vacate their shelters and ferries suspended during one of the most contested military escalations in the area.
North Korea is said to have fired upto 200 rounds of artillery shells near the islands of Yeonpyeong and Baengnyeong on Saturday with the two scarcely populated islands facing an escalation in their military expediments the South Korean joint chiefs of staff reported.The buffer shells of the weapons fell on the buffer zone that was created in 2018 in a tension reducing deal that fell apart in November last year after North Korea launched a spy satellite.
Seoul's military administration says that the repeated North Korean launch of artillery shells threatens peace on the pennisula as well hicking tensions between the two countries. However North Korea claimed that its constant military drills had no effect on the two islands. Following North Korea's launch of a spy satellite into the orbit, Seoul in November suspended the 2018 military accord in protest and this then forced Pyongyang to scrap it fully.
Relations between the Koreas are at the their worst and lowest point in decades after Kim Jong Un unveiled his country as a nuclear power through the constituiton which came hand in hand with successive tests of highly advanced and contested inter continental ballistic missiles. Kim also at the end of the year policy meetings urged his military to build up more arsenal and warned that war may breakup any time soon. The situation continues to be highly contested with evidence of a return to the old days of the cold war.
