evidence: Geography - note strategic location on Korea Strait; about 3,000 mostly small and uninhabited islands lie off the western and southern coasts [...] the disputed Northern Limit Line (NLL), including naval skirmishes between patrol boats in 1999 and 2002, the torpedoing and sinking of a South Korean corvette, the Cheonan, in 2010, and the bombardment of a South Korean Marine Corps installation on Yeonpyeong Island, also in 2010; since 2010, further minor incidents continue to occur periodically along the DMZ, where both the North and the South Korean militaries maintain large numbers of troops; ; in late 2023 and early 2024, the Kim regime abandoned decades of official policy and declared that South Korea was not inhabited by "fellow countrymen" but a separate and "hostile" state that the North would "subjugate" if war broke out (2024)