Following the suspension of the 2018 inter-Korean military agreement, South Korea’s Marine Corps’ artillery forces stationed in the northwest islands decided to conduct a maritime live-fire training session before the end of the month. 
 
A government official said on Wednesday that the Marine Corps stationed on the northwest islands near the inter-Korean maritime border will conduct a live-fire drill involving K-9 self-propelled howitzers this month. 
 
It will be the first artillery firing drill in the maritime buffer zone of the northwest islands in five years and nine months since the inter-Korean military agreement was signed in September 2018, excluding the firing in response to the North’s artillery shots in January. 

Since the signing of the inter-Korean agreement, the South’s Marine Corps has had to move the K9 self-propelled howitzers deployed on Yeonpyeong and Baengnyeong islands to the mainland to conduct firing drills. 
 
Moving the artillery and troops to land for such drills over the period is estimated to have cost around 12 billion won, or about eight-point-seven million U.S. dollars.