South Korea’s military fired dozens of shells Thursday at rival North Korea after the North lobbed a single artillery round at a South Korean border town, the South’s Defense ministry said.
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Household debt has grown rapidly as South Koreans took advantage of low borrowing costs to buy homes, spurred on by a government campaign to boost real estate transactions.
Tensions have spiked on the Korean Peninsula in recent weeks after two South Korean soldiers were seriously wounded by land mines in the demilitarized zone.
North Korea had promised to retaliate against the broadcasts, which criticise alleged provocations from Pyongyang and praising South Korea’s democracy.
Japan plans to ask the World Trade Organization to set up a panel to rule on Tokyo’s complaint over South Korea’s import ban on Japanese fishery products following the 2011 Fukushima nuclear meltdowns, sources said Wednesday.
Seoul then began blasting anti-North Korean propaganda from loudspeakers on the border, resuming a tactic that both sides had halted in 2004.
North Korea’s army said previously in a statement that the broadcasts were a declaration of war and that if they were not immediately stopped “an all-out military action of justice” would ensue.
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KBS News, which is state-run, quoted a South Korean military official as saying that North Korea opened fire at around 4pm local time (7pm GMT) on the western front.
