Ko Jong Chol, vice chief of the North Korean People’s Army’s General Staff, noted that Tuesday’s warning shots coincided with the South Korea-US summertime military drills and accused Seoul of deliberately trying to raise tensions.

Shortly after Ko’s statement, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff confirmed it had fired warning shots on Tuesday afternoon at North Korean soldiers who briefly crossed the military demarcation line in the central border region while carrying out unspecified construction work.

Citing the expansion of South Korea-US military exercises and the hard-line policies of Seoul’s previous conservative government, Kim last year declared that North Korea was abandoning its long-standing goals of a peaceful unification between the Koreas and ordered the rewriting of the North’s constitution to mark the South as a permanent enemy.

Kim’s government has so far dismissed the diplomatic overtures by Seoul’s new liberal president, Lee Jae Myung, who said last week that Seoul would seek to restore a 2018 inter-Korean military agreement aimed at reducing border tensions, while urging Pyongyang to reciprocate by rebuilding trust and resuming dialogue.