Free Republic

South Korea said Friday it had deployed advanced weapons-tracking radar systems on islands near its disputed Yellow Sea border with North Korea following last week's artillery barrages by the North. Defence Minister Kim Tae-Young told lawmakers the AN/TPQ-36 Firefinder systems had been set up on Baengnyeong and Yeonpyeong islands. "A few days ago, deployment of anti-artillery radar systems was completed," the minister was quoted as saying by Yonhap news agency. The system is designed to determine where incoming artillery and rocket fire originated, to allow for a possible counter-attack. After declaring two "no sail" zones, the communist state last week...

N. Korea designates additional 'no-sail' zones: sources SEOUL, Feb. 1 (Yonhap) -- North Korea declared five additional maritime areas off the country's east and west coasts as "no-sail" zones over the weekend, raising concerns over the possibility of a short-range missile launch, South Korean military sources said Monday. The move, taken on Sunday, followed the North's declaration on Jan. 25 of two maritime areas near the Northern Limit Line (NLL) in the Yellow Sea as "no-sail" zones until March 29, the last day of the country's "regular" military drills. The NLL, the de facto inter-Korean maritime border, was drawn by...