Fear grips migrant workers on South Korea’s border island: ‘is there going to be a war?’

Sri Lankan migrant workers on South Korea’s Yeonpyeong island worry about getting caught in the inter-Korean crossfire

They say inflamed tensions between the two Koreas evoke memories of their own country’s devastating civil war: ‘I’m getting scared’

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Sri Lankan workers Siyam Mohamed, 25, and MJ. Nimshan Dananjaya, 23, eat lunch on South Korea’s Yeonpyeong Island on Tuesday. Photo: Reuters

Published: 8:00am, 10 Jan 2024Updated: 10:10am, 10 Jan 2024

Sri Lankans Siyam Mohamed and MJ Nimshan Dananjaya hadn’t realised how close South Korea’s Yeonpyeong island is to North Korea when they arrived in November to work catching crabs.

They had a rude awakening on Friday, however, when alerts sounded on their phones – indecipherable as they don’t read Korean – followed by the boom of artillery fire.

The scare came after North Korea fired off more than 200 shells a few miles from the island, and still more over the weekend, in what it described as military drills. The South responded on Friday with its own live-fire exercises.

A South Korean tank fires a shell during a live-fire military drill on Yeonpyeong Island earlier this month. Photo: South Korean Defence Ministry/Handout via Reuters

For residents on the island, the rising tensions bring back memories of 2010, when a North Korean bombardment killed two soldiers and two civilians there, and left an unconfirmed number of North Korean casualties after South Korea fired back.

That history was news to Mohamed and Dananjaya.

“I was panicked by the sound,” Mohamed, 25, said on Tuesday in his dormitory on the island. “Is there going to be a war? I came here for my family, my parents and siblings, but I am getting scared. I am worried that they worry about me.”

He said the fears raised memories of their own harsh situation back when Sri Lanka was torn by civil war.