It’s been a busy week at the two major hotspots on the Korean Peninsula – the DMZ and the Northern Limit Line (NLL). On Monday, a planned leaflet release by South Korean activists at the Imjingak pavilion, which sits right near the border, was blocked, although activists later released the leaflets at a site about an hour away. The North Korean military had made specific threats, warning residents to evacuate before the launch in “anticipating of possible damage.”

The North had warned that such threats were not “empty talk” – and, in this case, they may not have been bluffing. South Korean military sources said, “North Korea's frontline artillery batteries forward-deployed self-propelled guns, towed howitzers and personnel at fire positions” up until later in the afternoon, when the activists had been successfully blocked.