This is what it’s like to live in North Korea’s firing line

On a sparsely populated island surrounded by azure seas just a two-hour ferry ride from Seoul, the locals fish for crab and chat amiably in the mural-lined laneways that make up their tight-knit community of 2000 people.

As if to prove his point, Kim stops talking mid-sentence, cups his ear and looks out across the Yellow Sea. “Can you hear it?” he asks.We are standing at a lookout where North Korean territory is faintly visible on the horizon. There is a distant thudding noise coming from somewhere out at sea, which Kim says is North Korean artillery fire. “Whenever I hear artillery fire, I get worried.”

“Ten to 15 years ago North Korea was an isolated regime, but today it is the dagger at the end of the bloc of authoritarian regimes, and it can do whatever it wants,” says Peter Lee, a research fellow at the Asan Institute for Policy Studies, a South Korean think tank. Some believe the motivation for breaking with his grandfather’s principles by saying no unification for now and declaring that South Koreans are a different ethnic race instead of fellow countrymen is part of an effort to control the domestic narrative, which paints the North as a superior regime.

The heightened tensions in the region come ahead of South Korea’s legislative elections in April. While the polls will testauthority, the outcome is unlikely to set back his efforts to deepen security ties with US allies such as Japan and Australia, or his more combative approach to manage North Korea’s sabre-rattling. Regardless of the election outcome, Yoon will remain in power until 2027.

“It would also put South Korea in a very vulnerable position vis-a-vis what overtures Mr Trump might send Kim Jong Un and his respect for leaders like Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin.” While she says she tries not to lose sleep about another attack, Kim believes the absence of Chinese fishing vessels in local waters since January is a worry. When they are present, the locals take it as a positive sign because they believe North Korea would alert China if its citizens were in danger.

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