Life on the frontline: fear, camaraderie on South Korean border island
- Yeonpyeong is less than 2km to the de facto maritime border between the two Koreas, and has about 10 shelters for people to seek refuge
- Residents remain calm even as recent rounds of shelling from North Korea remind them of a previous attack in 2010 where artillery fire destroyed their homes
When a North Korean artillery shell slammed into his house and burned it to the ground in 2010, Jung Chang-kuan thought that war had broken out again.
That attack was a North Korean artillery barrage on Jung’s home, the remote South Korean border island of Yeonpyeong, which killed four people in the first such incident since the 1950-53 Korean war.
And on Friday, that previous attack was on Jung’s mind as he fled to a shelter with his family after North Korea fired artillery shells near his island, prompting a South Korean live-fire exercise in response.
“There wasn’t that much fear inside the shelter. Rather, all the residents came and it was just a chatting atmosphere because they had not seen each other in a long time,” he said of the Friday evacuation.
In contrast, in 2010, Jung said his family was unable to salvage any of their belongings from their burning house and had no choice but to run.
“The shells rained down, smoke billowed, and everything was engulfed in flames and destroyed, there was no time to think about anything else,” he told Agence France-Presse.
Having to flee again on Friday, 70-year-old Jung said it felt both strange and “reminiscent” of the 2010 incident.