North and South Korea have exchanged gunfire in the Demilitarised Zone (DMZ) which divides the two countries.

Seoul’s military said shots from the North hit a guard post in the central border town of Cheorwon. It said it returned fire and delivered a warning announcement. Such incidents across the world’s most heavily fortified border are rare.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told US media the shots from the North were believed to be “accidental”. Meanwhile South Korea’s Yonhap news agency quoted a government official as saying the shots were not likely to have been intentional.

No injuries were reported in the incident. Military officials in the South say there was no sign of unusual troop movements.
The last time the North opened fire on the South happened in 2017 when a North Korean soldier made a dash across the military demarcation line to defect.The demilitarised zone (DMZ) was set up after the Korean War in 1953 in order to create a buffer zone between the two countries.

For the past two years, the government in Seoul has tried to turn the heavily fortified border into a peace zone.

Easing military tensions at the border was one of the agreements reached between the leaders of the two countries at a summit in Pyongyang in September 2018.

Kim Jong-un’s reappearance in public, reported by North Korean state media on Friday, followed an almost-three-week unexplained absence that sparked intense global speculation about his health.