DPRK declares 5 more no sail zones off coast
0 
The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) on Monday declared five more no sail zone off the west and the east coast, Seoul's Yonhap News Agency reported quoting military sources.
The additional "no-sail" zones, declared on Sunday, covered western waters off Kyodong Island and the coasts of Chulsan and Sunchon Counties in the DPRK's North Pyongan province and eastern waters off the coast of Kumya County in North Hamkyong Province, the sources were quoted as saying.
All ships are banned from sailing in the zones between 7:00 a.m. local time to 8:00 p.m. local time during the period of Jan. 31 to Feb. 2, Yonhap said.
The news raised the concerns over the possibility of a short- range missile launch. South Korean military is keeping close eyes on the DPRK, since it always fires ship-to-ship short-range missile in the above-mentioned waters, the sources said.
The DPRK on Jan. 25 declared two shipping exclusion zones until March 29 in waters near the disputed maritime border Northern Limit Line (NLL) in the Yellow Sea, and fired some 350 artillery shells into the zones in the next few days.
NLL was fixed unilaterally by the U.S.-led United Nations Command after the 1950-1953 Korean War. South Korea holds the NLL as the de-facto western inter-Korean border, but the DPRK rejected the NLL and only recognized the demarcation line it drew in 1999, which was further south of the NLL.
