South Korea fires warning shots after North Korea's fresh border incursion

Seoul's military has said it had fired warning shots after North Korean soldiers briefly crossed the heavily fortified border in the third such incursion this month.

The nuclear-armed North has been reinforcing the border in recent months, adding tactical roads and laying more landmines, which has led to "casualties" among its troops due to accidental explosions, South Korea said on Friday.

On Thursday morning, "several North Korean soldiers who were working inside the DMZ on the central frontline crossed the Military Demarcation Line," Seoul's Joint Chiefs of Staff said.

"After our military's warning broadcasts and warning shots, the North Korean soldiers retreated northward," they added.

Similar incidents took place on June 9 and Tuesday this week, with Seoul's military saying both incursions appeared to be accidental.

Relations between the two Koreas are at one of their lowest points in years, with Kim Jong Un hosting Russian leader Vladimir Putin this week, and signing a mutual defence agreement that has raised hackles in Seoul.

Balloon war

In response, the South a major weapons exporter has said it will "reconsider" a longstanding policy that has prevented it from supplying arms directly to Ukraine.

"While attention is focused on Putin's pariah partnerships, the Kim regime is recklessly endangering soldiers with rushed construction work at the inter-Korean border," said Leif-Eric Easley, a professor at Ewha University in Seoul.

The two Koreas have also been locked in a tit-for-tat "balloon war", with an activist in the South confirming Friday that he had floated more balloons carrying propaganda north, a move likely to trigger a response from Pyongyang, which has already sent more than a thousand balloons carrying trash southward.

Legally, Seoul cannot prevent activists from sending balloons across the border, after a 2023 court ruling that it was an unjustifiable infringement on free speech.

In 2020, blaming the anti-North leaflets, Pyongyang unilaterally cut off all official military and political communication links with Seoul and blew up a disused inter-Korean liaison office on its side of the border.