Author | Yan Chixia
At the beginning of 2024, the world situation immediately changed dramatically.
Past conflicts are still ongoing, and many regions are heating up again, and for a time the world is full of powder kegs.
One of the most interesting ones, and the closest to us, is the Korean Peninsula. Since yesterday, the situation on the Korean Peninsula has suddenly escalated, and the DPRK and the ROK have once again been tense.
The South Korean military said on the 5th that North Korea conducted a fire Xi exercise on the west coast near Baeknyeong Island and Yeonpyeong Island that morning, firing about 200 artillery shells, but the shells all fell on the North Korean side and did not cross the "northern limit" of the actual maritime border between the two sides.
Local residents of Yeonpyeong Island received an evacuation order from the South Korean military on the same day, and the military also informed them that a Xi would be held in the area that day.
There have been no reports of losses to South Korean civilians or the military, but South Korea has accused North Korea of a provocation.
For a time, the sky over the peninsula was covered with war clouds, and the heat of the region skyrocketed, and the situation was about to erupt!
At a press conference held by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday, a reporter from the Agence France-Presse (AFP) asked the mainland about its attitude toward the incident.
It is hoped that all parties concerned will remain calm and exercise restraint and refrain from taking actions that will aggravate tensions in order to avoid further escalation of the situation.
Seeing this, I believe everyone should feel the same, they may all think that South Korea has not done anything, why is North Korea so provocative, is this crazy?
If you really think so, it only shows that the sinister intentions of South Korea and the United States and Western countries have been achieved.
Because in fact, for the past month, the U.S.-South Korean coalition has been conducting deterrence exercises near Xi North Korean border.
In particular, the latest seven-day New Year's Eve joint Xi just ended on the 4th of this month, during which the US-ROK joint forces dispatched a variety of heavy weapons and large combat weapons.
Since the first day of the new year, the South Korean military has conducted actual combat exercises in areas close to the North Korean border, and later the United States and South Korea have sent a number of destroyers to conduct combat Xi in the waters around North Korea.
That said, the U.S.-South Korean coalition has been frantically provoking on North Korea's doorstep for the past month, and has conducted fire Xi in the demilitarized zone of the Korean Peninsula, which is considered a serious provocation by North Korea.
If you can show off your might at North Korea's doorstep, why can't North Korea fire artillery shells into its own waters?
It should be noted that South Korea only announced the end of the seven-day South Korea-US New Year's Eve joint exercise Xi January 4. In other words, in order to avoid a military conflict, North Korea endured until the US-South Korea joint military exercise Xi a ceasefire, and then began firing artillery shells on January 5.
Regardless of how serious the emergency evacuation in South Korea was, there were no civilian casualties or property damage at all. North Korean shells landed in their own no-man's land, clearly warning the United States and South Korea.
But under the powerful offensive of Western public opinion, South Korea has become an innocent victim. The firepower exercises of the US-ROK coalition in the past month have Xi tanks, planes, warships, and everything, but the Western media will not even let out a fart.
Now North Korea can't bear it anymore, and just a warning fire is fired at its own area, which immediately alarms the West. North Korea has directly become a peace-destroying party, which has been criticized by the United States and the West together.
South Korea hurriedly pretended to be a white rabbit and began to sell miserably pitifully, cooperating with the public opinion offensive of the United States and the West, striving for international support and sympathy, and being a full green tea.
It should be said or not, the media in the United States and the West are indeed powerful, directly portraying North Korea as a violent country, and finding sufficient excuses for the follow-up military actions of the United States and South Korea.
Everyone also did not know that just after the 200 shells in the DPRK, the ROK immediately conducted a live-fire artillery drill, which was a tough blow to the DPRK.
However, these US and Western media also did not report on it, but instead grabbed the DPRK and fired artillery and repeatedly said things.
Now we should be able to understand why the DPRK suddenly announced a few days ago that the DPRK-ROK relations are no longer "relations of the same nation" but outright "hostile relations," and at the same time, the DPRK has begun to reorganize its armaments and war, with the intention of reunifying the peninsula.
The US-ROK coalition forces have been firing artillery at the DPRK's doorstep for a month, and the DPRK must of course be prepared for war at any time.
Let's not forget that at the end of last year, South Korea took the lead in announcing a bill to suspend part of the effect of the "Panmunjom Declaration" Agreement on the Implementation of the Agreement in the Military Field.
After the agreement is suspended, the ROK's reconnaissance and surveillance activities against the DPRK in the area of the ROK-DPRK military demarcation line will resume immediately, and the ROK military's ability to identify and respond to threats to the DPRK will be greatly strengthened.
The next day, the DPRK Ministry of Defense issued a statement stating that "from now on, our military will not be bound by it and will immediately resume all military measures suspended as a result of the said military agreement," the DPRK Ministry of Defense issued a statement on the DPRK-ROK military agreement signed in 2018.
The DPRK's Ministry of National Defense said that "stronger military forces and new types of military equipment will be deployed in the area of the military demarcation line".
In conclusion, the DPRK also stressed that the "inter-Korean military agreement" has long been reduced to a dead letter under the deliberate and provocative instigation of the ROK. In the event of a military conflict between the two Koreas, the responsibility lies with the South Korean side.
Originally, after the signing of the "Panmunjom Declaration," there had been no confrontation between the DPRK and the ROK for five years, but now that the agreement has been nullified, the DPRK and ROK armies are once again loaded with live ammunition on both sides of the 38th parallel, and the sabre-rattling may go off at any time!
In the New Year's message just released, North Korea clearly mentioned that the "peace policy" of the Moon Jae-in administration in previous years had missed a great opportunity to develop nuclear and conventional military capabilities, and that such a thing "will never happen again" in the future.
The provocation of the US-ROK coalition has now received a strong reply from the DPRK, and the DPRK and the ROK have once again started a full-scale armed confrontation.
We need to prevent the United States from deliberately igniting the powder keg on the Korean Peninsula at a time when the United States is mired in war in the Middle East.
But at the end of the day, the United States is still afraid of North Korea's nuclear weapons and missiles. The reason why North Korea is a very evil country in the eyes of the United States is because North Korea has nuclear weapons.
Libya and Iraq were once evil countries in the eyes of the United States, but they did not have nuclear weapons, so they were directly eliminated.
North Korea has been as fearless as it is now, and has not flinched from provocations by the US-South Korean coalition, relying on its nuclear weapons.
This is called the strategic balance of power, and if we want to maintain regional peace, we must first maintain the strategic balance of power.
Now that the DPRK has put its words out, if there is a military conflict between the two Koreas, the responsibility lies entirely with the ROK!
In the words of the eldest brother, this is called not to be unpredictable!
But then again, the big countries in the East are only concerned with the security of the region north of the 38th parallel. As for the south of the 38th parallel, no matter what happens, it has nothing to do with us.
Even if the DPRK wants to reunify the peninsula in the future, it will be a matter left over from history and an internal affair of the DPRK. Just like in the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea, as long as the United States does not interfere, we will naturally not intervene.
Besides, the situation today is completely different from that back then, North Korea has all kinds of nuclear warheads and missiles, and South Korea's economically developed areas are all within the range of North Korean artillery.
As long as South Korea feels that the United States can cover it, it must be prepared for Seoul to be razed and decades of economic gains to be burned.
At that time, I am afraid that the south of the 38th parallel will become a scorched earth in an instant, and it will be too late for the United States to stage another Inchon landing.
The last Korean War ended with a temporary truce, but it was not over. If South Korea is really not afraid of death, there will still be only one country left on the peninsula in the future!