North Korea starts live-fire drill

North Korea set off its live-fire drill Tuesday near the disputed inter-Korean border islands, about a month after conducting the same drill.

Military officials said that Pyongyang started the pre-noticed live-fire drills around 2 p.m., Xinhua reported.

North Korea was known to have fired self-propelled artillery shells from coastal battery positions toward waters just north of the western inter-Koran sea border.

South Korean military planned to fire, in response, its artillery shells toward waters north of the sea border if North Korean shells fall on its territorial waters, Kim Min-seok, South Korea's defence ministry spokesman, said.

The Southwestern Command of the Korean People's Army sent a fax to the South Korean Navy's Second Fleet early Tuesday, which notified the live-fire drill near the Northern Limit Line (NLL).

The NLL is a disputed maritime demarcation line in the Yellow (West) Sea of military control and acts as the de facto maritime boundary between North and South Korea.

People in the five western sea border islands have been evacuated, and four South Korean fighter jets scrambled to prepare for possible shell landing on the islands.