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Inside a shelter on Yeonpyeong Island on June 26, 2024, during South Korean Marine Corps maritime live-fire drills on the island. (Shin Hyeong-cheol/Hankyoreh)

“I figured I’d have gotten used to it by now, but whenever I hear a cannon firing, my stomach lurches. It feels like the Korean War is starting all over again,” said Choi Do-hwa, an 87-year-old who was born in North Korea but fled South during the war.

Choi was referring to an earsplitting crack of artillery fire that resounded on Yeonpyeong Island, a small set of islands around 100 kilometers west of Incheon, as part of a barrage that had begun at 2:05 pm on Wednesday.

Choi and the other residents who were sitting under a pavilion in Yeonpyeong Village spoke in worried tones whenever they heard another gun go off.

“This is just life for people on Yeonpyeong. The soldiers aren’t the ones guarding this island — that’s us,” one old-timer said with a sardonic smile.

Wednesday is when the Republic of Korea Marine Corps resumed regular maritime firing exercises with K9 self-propelled howitzers on Yeonpyeong and Baengnyeong islands, after a hiatus of six years and ten months. As a result, Yeonpyeong Island was wreathed in fear and anxiety.

South Korean Marines launch a Spike missile during live-fire drills on Yeonpyeong Island near the Northern Limit Line in the Yellow Sea on June 26, 2024. (Yonhap)

Maritime live-fire exercises with K9 howitzers and other weapons on South Korea’s Northwest Islands — five islands in the Yellow Sea located close to North Korea — were suspended as part of the buffer-creating Sept. 19 inter-Korean military agreement signed in 2018. But they resumed on Wednesday after the South Korean government fully suspended the pact on June 4 in response to the large number of balloons loaded with trash flown over the border by North Korea.

One round of maritime firing exercises was held on Yeonpyeong and Baengnyeong islands this past January, but that was an isolated incident following North Korean maritime gunnery practice in the buffer zone.

That morning, the Yeonpyeong Township Office made repeated announcements about the upcoming firing exercises over loudspeakers and advised residents to take shelter. Residents were noticeably tense, asking whether the exercises were happening today and whether they would be a regular occurrence.

An entrance to a shelter on Yeonpyeong Island on June 26, 2024, during live-fire drills near the Northern Limit Line in the Yellow Sea. (Shin Hyeong-cheol/Hankyoreh)

Around noon, residents watched with stony faces as a line of helicopters flew toward the site of the exercises.

Employees at the government office and Marines led residents to the air raid shelter at 1:30 pm, about half an hour before the exercises. Park Myeong-seon, aged 78, had gone to the shelter with her husband. “We came to the shelter because we were feeling so anxious. I feel a little safer here,” she said.

The artillery fire could barely be heard inside the shelter. At the same time, residents on the other four Northwest Islands — Baengnyeong, Daecheong, Socheong and U — were being led into their own shelters.

Even more people remained behind in town, where the crash of the guns was so loud it made the windows rattle. One resident who was sitting on a bench outside a supermarket eventually got fed up with the relentless artillery fire and went inside the store, slamming the door behind him.

Some restaurants had put up notices explaining they weren’t serving lunch that day because of the exercises.

In the end, what’s most frightening for Yeonpyeong residents, both young and old, isn’t the deafening roar of the artillery but the possibility of North Korea making a show of force or some other provocation.

“There was one guy who would pop a pill for his heart [whenever he heard a gun go off]. Many people go to the air raid shelter because you feel safer there,” said a 65-year-old resident surnamed Park. “Under the previous administration, things felt stable, but this administration is clashing with North Korea, and people are terrified about the possibility that something will go wrong.”

Park Eun-gyeong is a 20-year-old employee at a café on the island. “I came back to Yeonpyeong after a long time away, and I was surprised to hear about the exercises. I’m not so scared of the exercises themselves as about what North Korea might do in response,” she said.

“I’m afraid that North Korea might retaliate. Who knows when the North might make a sudden provocation?” said 77-year-old Kim Sun-bok, her voice trailing off.

Park Myeong-seon, a resident of Yeonpyeong, said she came to the shelter after drills started. (Shin Hyeong-cheol/Hankyoreh)

Other residents are anxious that the exercises will disrupt blue crab fishing, which is one of the main occupations on the island. As it happens, late June is the tail end of the crab-catching season.

“I’m already busy with crab season, and now I’ve got to worry about potential disruptions for the crab fishery. Everyone went fishing in the morning and canceled their afternoon work and came back home,” said a 55-year-old resident surnamed Kim with a sigh.

Baengnyeong Island officials ordered fishers to remain home on Wednesday because of the exercises, while fishers on Yeonpyeong Island voluntarily refrained from going out during the exercises.

The exercises ended at 3:03 pm, after about an hour. But while the guns had stopped booming, people’s ears continued to ring for some time. The anxiety on people’s faces didn’t go away either.

The seemingly constant tensions on the Korean Peninsula are leaving a mark on Yeonpyeong Island.

By Shin Hyeong-cheol, staff reporter

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