North Korea fires more than 200 artillery shells towards the South

North Korea fired about 200 artillery shells near two South Korean islands this Friday in an aggression that the Pyongyang regime described as a "natural response" to maneuvers carried out in the area by South Korea, who in turn accused its neighbor of threatening peace on the peninsula.

This military escalation is one of the most serious recorded on the Korean Peninsula since 2010, when the North bombed the South Korean island of Yeonpyeong. This Friday, the inhabitants of two South Korean islands (Yeonpyeong itself and Baengnyeong ) received orders to evacuate to shelters.

In recent days, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has increased war-mongering messages, threatening to "annihilate" South Korea and the United States. Against this backdrop, even China, which shares a border with North Korea and is the main political and economic support of North Korea, launched in recent hours a call for "moderation" to all parties and asked to avoid a further escalation in the hostilities.

Relations between the two Koreas are at a moment of tension not seen in decades, after the North Korean leader, Kim Jong Un, inscribed in the Constitution the country's vocation as a nuclear power and tested several intercontinental ballistic missiles. In a political meeting at the end of the year, Kim Jong Un warned of a possible nuclear attack by the South and called for strengthening the military arsenal in the face of a conflict that he stated could "break out at any moment."