Seoul scrambles jets after detecting 180 N. Korean warplanes near joint border
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South Korea scrambled 80 aircraft, including, F-35A stealth fighters.
PHOTO: AFP
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SEOUL - South Korea’s military scrambled stealth jets on Friday after detecting the mobilisation of 180 North Korean warplanes, as it continued conducting large-scale joint air drills with the United States that have infuriated Pyongyang.
The North Korean planes flew north of the so-called tactical measure line, 20km north of the Military Demarcation Line. South Korea scrambled 80 aircraft, including F-35A stealth fighters, in response. The demarcation line is used as a basis for South Korea’s air defence operations.
Meanwhile, about 240 aircraft participating in the Vigilant Storm air exercises with the US continued with the drills, the military said.
A flight of 10 North Korean warplanes made similar manoeuvres in October, prompting South Korea to also scramble its jets.
The manoeuvres came after North Korea fired more than 80 rounds of artillery into the sea overnight,
The barrage of launches prompted the US and South Korea to extend their joint drills.
Shortly after that decision was announced on Thursday, Pyongyang launched three short-range ballistic missiles, calling the extension of the drill “a very dangerous and wrong choice”.
About 80 artillery rounds fired by the North followed, landing in a maritime “buffer zone”, Seoul’s military said.
The barrage was a “clear violation” of the 2018 agreement that established the buffer zone in a bid to reduce tensions between the two sides, Seoul’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said.
US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin has described Pyongyang’s ICBM launch as “illegal and destabilising”.
South Korea and the US vowed to pursue new measures to demonstrate their “determination and capabilities” against the North’s growing threats.
The two allies have repeatedly warned that Pyongyang’s recent launches could be a precursor to a nuclear test, which would be its seventh.
Pyongyang has called Vigilant Storm “an aggressive and provocative military drill targeting” North Korea, and threatened that South Korea and the US would “pay the most horrible price in history” if it continued.
The North’s latest launches come as South Korea is in a period of national mourning after more than 150 people killed in a crowd crush in Seoul last Saturday.
Pyongyang’s provocations, “especially during our national mourning period, are against humanity and humanitarianism”, Ms Lee Hyo-jung, a vice-spokesman at Seoul’s unification ministry, said on Friday.
“The government strongly condemns North Korea for continuing threats and provocations, citing our annual and defensive drills, raising tensions on the Korean peninsula,” she said, blaming the current tension on Pyongyang’s “reckless nuclear and missile development”.
In addition to extending Vigilant Storm through Saturday, Seoul’s military announced that the annual Taegeuk exercise, which focuses on “improving wartime transition performance” and crisis management, would be held next week.
The computer-simulated exercise aims to strengthen “the ability to carry out practical mission capability in preparation for various threats, such as North Korea’s nuclear weapons, missiles, and recent provocations”, it said.
The US and its allies believe North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un, who in September reaffirmed his refusal to disarm, is laying the groundwork to conduct his first test of a nuclear bomb in five years.
The US, Japan and South Korea have promised a coordinated response if Pyongyang detonates a nuclear device.
The nuclear test might be used to advance Mr Kim’s pursuit of miniaturised nuclear warheads to mount on missiles to strike South Korea and Japan, which host the bulk of American troops in Asia, analysts say. AFP, REUTERS
