SEOUL: North Korea said on Sunday it had test-fired an intercontinental ballistic missile as a warning to Washington and Seoul, saying the successful “surprise” drill demonstrated Pyongyang’s capacity to launch a “fatal nuclear counterattack”.
In response, the United States and South Korea staged joint air drills featuring a strategic bomber and stealth fighter jets, Seoul said. The United States and Japan also held a joint military drill on Sunday, Tokyo’s defence ministry said.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un ordered the “sudden launching drill” at 8 am on Saturday and a Hwasong-15 missile, a weapon first tested by the North in 2017, was fired from Pyongyang airport that afternoon, the official KCNA reported.
South Korea’s military said it detected an ICBM launch at 17:22 on Saturday. Japan said the missile flew for 66 minutes before splashing down in its Exclusive Economic Zone, with their analysis indicating it was capable of hitting the mainland United States.
North Korea’s leadership hailed the test, its first in seven weeks, saying it showed “the actual war capacity of the ICBM units which are ready for mobile and mighty counterattack”, state media KCNA said.
The launch was “actual proof” of the country’s “capacity of fatal nuclear counterattack on the hostile forces”, it said.
The South Korean military said on Sunday it had staged joint air drills with the United States featuring at least one US B-1B long-range bomber.
“The exercise displayed the timely and immediate deployment of the US extended deterrence assets to the Korean peninsula,” demonstrating the “overwhelming force” of the allies, the defence ministry said in a statement.
US and Japanese forces also held a joint exercise on Sunday “amid an increasingly severe security environment”, Japan’s defence ministry said, although it offered no details about the type of drill conducted.
— AFP
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