North and South Korea exchange gunfire along land border, a day after Kim Jong-un reappears

North and South Korean troops exchanged fire along their tense border on Sunday, the South’s military said, blaming North Korean soldiers for targeting a guard post. The Joint Chiefs of Staff in Seoul said in a statement that North Korean troops fired several bullets at a South Korean guard post inside the heavily fortified border. The shots were heard around 7.40am, with four bullet marks subsequently being found in the outer wall of the post. The South Korean side responded by issuing warning broadcasts toward North Korea and firing two bursts of 10 warning shots in accordance with established procedure, the Joint Chiefs office said. An officer later said the gunshots did not appear to be an intentional provocation, noting that visibility was diminished due to fog and that the North Korean soldiers usually rotate shifts around that time. The officer added that a notice seeking an explanation was sent to the North via the inter-Korean communication line, but that no response has been received. Both militaries have multiple guard posts along the demilitarised zone, a 4km wide, 250km long stretch of land separating the two Koreas. Similar incidents across the tense border have occasionally occurred in the past. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the shots were believed to have been accidental. “Handful of shots came across from the north, we think those were accidental,” he said on ABC’s This Week. “South Koreans did return fire. There was no loss of life on either side,” he added. Trump wishes Kim well amid reports on North Korean leader’s health It comes a day after North Korea broadcast images of leader Kim Jong-un reappearing in public after a 20-day absence amid intense speculation about his health. KCNA said Kim attended Friday’s ceremony marking the completion of a fertiliser factory near Pyongyang along with senior officials. State TV showed Kim smiling and walking around factory facilities. Kim earlier vanished from the public eye after presiding over a Politburo meeting of the ruling Workers’ Party on April 11 to discuss the coronavirus. Speculation about his health began swirling after he missed an April 15 event commemorating the birthday of his grandfather and state founder, Kim Il-sung, something he had never done since inheriting power upon his father Kim Jong-il’s death in late 2011. On Sunday, South Korea said there was not enough information to support rumours that Kim had undergone surgery. “Chairman Kim is not believed to have received surgery,” an unnamed senior official at the South’s presidential office said, according to Yonhap news agency. “There were media reports speculating about Kim’s surgery, citing a change in the way he walks,” the official added, saying Seoul had enough grounds to draw the conclusion. US President Donald Trump on Saturday welcomed the re-emergence of Kim after weeks of speculation about his health, but prospects for the US efforts to persuade Pyongyang to denuclearise appear as bleak as ever. What would the US and China do if chaos erupts in North Korea? Trump, who met Kim three times in 2018 and 2019 in unprecedented but unsuccessful personal attempts to persuade him to give up his nuclear weapons, tweeted: “I, for one, am glad to see he is back, and well!” Trump has continued to refer to Kim as a friend, but the mystery of the past three weeks has served to emphasise the limits of that relationship and his lack of progress in persuading North Korea to give up a weapons programme that now threatens the United States. Kim Jong-un isn’t the first of North Korea’s leaders to ‘disappear’: a look back The exchange of gunshots was the latest confrontation between the rival Koreas that technically remain at war. In October 2014, the two Koreas exchanged machine-gun fire after North Korean soldiers attempted to shoot down some balloons. In July of the following year, South Korean troops fired warning shots at North Korean soldiers who trespassed into South Korean territory. Choi Kang, vice-president of the Asian Institute for Policy Studies, says the timing of the “grey area” provocation shows Kim is still in charge of the North Korean military. “Yesterday, Kim was trying to show he is perfectly healthy, and today, Kim is trying to mute all kinds of speculation that he may not have full control over the military,” Choi said. “Rather than going all the way by firing missiles and supervising a missile launch, Kim could be reminding us, ‘yes I’m healthy and I’m still in power’.” The KCNA report said workers at the fertiliser factory broke into “thunderous cheers” for Kim, who it said is guiding the nation in a struggle to build a self-reliant economy in the face of a “head wind” by “hostile forces”. The report did not mention any direct comment toward Washington or Seoul. During his nearly three-week absence, state media reported that Kim was carrying out routine activities outside public view, such as sending greetings to the leaders of Syria, Cuba and South Africa, and expressing gratitude to workers building tourist facilities in the coastal town of Wonsan, where some speculated he was staying. Cheong Seong-Chang, an analyst at South Korea’s Sejong Institute, said the video footage of Kim suggested that he is recovering from some sort of medical setback that affected his walking, possibly related to his ankle. Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse