US, South Korea stage joint air exercise after North Korea’s ICBM launch

SMA NEWS – SEOUL
The United States and South Korea held a joint air exercise involving US strategic bombers on Sunday, a day after North Korea fired a Hwasong-15 intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) in a “sudden launching drill.”
South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said the exercise, where South Korea’s F-35A, F-15K and US F-16 fighters escorted American B-1B bombers, demonstrated the allies’ “overwhelming” defense capabilities and readiness posture.
“(The exercise) strengthened the combined operation capability and affirmed the United States’ ironclad commitment to the defense of the Korean Peninsula and the implementation of extended deterrence,” the South’s military said in a statement.
Japan’s Fuji News Network said Japan and the United States were also likely to conduct a joint air drill as early as Sunday afternoon.
The US-South Korea exercise comes a day after North Korea launched a long-range ballistic missile into the sea off Japan’s west coast, following a warning of a strong response to upcoming military drills by South Korea and the United States.
North Korea’s state media KCNA said the country conducted a “sudden launching drill” on Saturday in an “actual proof” of its efforts to turn the “capacity of fatal nuclear counterattack on the hostile forces into the irresistible one.”
Leader Kim Jong Un’s sister, Kim Yo Jong, issued yet another warning and bristled at the United States for trying to turn the UN Security Council into what she called a “tool for its heinous hostile policy” toward Pyongyang.
“I warn that we will watch every movement of the enemy and take corresponding and very powerful and overwhelming counteraction against its every move hostile to us,” she said in a statement.