Yeonpyeong shelling

The Yeonpyeong shelling was one of the most serious inter-Korean military incidents since the 1953 armistice. On the afternoon of 23 November 2010, North Korean coastal artillery units fired roughly 170 rounds at Yeonpyeong-do (Yeonpyeong Island), a South Korean-held island in the Yellow Sea located just south of the disputed Northern Limit Line (NLL). South Korean K-9 self-propelled howitzers returned fire toward North Korean positions on the Ongjin Peninsula.

Four South Koreans were killed: two Republic of Korea Marines (Sgt. Seo Jeong-woo and Pvt. Moon Kwang-wook) and two civilian construction workers. Around a dozen more were injured, dozens of homes were destroyed, and most of the island's roughly 1,300 residents were evacuated to the mainland. North Korean casualties were never officially disclosed.

Pyongyang justified the attack by claiming that a South Korean live-fire exercise earlier that day (part of the Hoguk drills) had dropped shells into waters it considers its own. Seoul countered that the drills fired southwestward, away from North Korea, and were conducted in South Korean waters. The underlying dispute is the NLL, drawn unilaterally by the UN Command in 1953 and never accepted by the DPRK, which asserts a more southerly Military Demarcation Line in the West Sea.

The incident followed the March 2010 sinking of the ROKS Cheonan, attributed by a multinational investigation to a North Korean torpedo, and together the two events defined a particularly tense year. Defense Minister Kim Tae-young resigned days after the shelling amid criticism that the response was too restrained. The UN Security Council did not pass a resolution, partly due to Chinese reluctance to assign blame. South Korea subsequently revised its rules of engagement to permit proportional-plus retaliation and reinforced its northwestern island garrisons.