A man watches a TV screen showing a file footage of North Korea's missile launch, at the Seoul Railway Station in Seoul, South Korea on Tuesday. Photo / AP
A man watches a TV screen showing a file footage of North Korea's missile launch, at the Seoul Railway Station in Seoul, South Korea on Tuesday. Photo / AP
The United States tonight flew some of its most advanced warplanes over South Korea in a show of force against North Korea, after Pyongyang fired a midrange ballistic missile over Japan earlier this week, South Korea's military said.
Two US B-1B bombers and four F-35 fighters participated in training withSouth Korean F-15 fighter jets, an official from Seoul's Defense Ministry said.
The planes took part in bombing exercises in a military field near South Korea's eastern coast, but it wasn't immediately clear whether they were live-fire drills, according to the official.
The B-1Bs were flown in from Andersen Air Force Base in Guam while the F-35s came from a U.S. base in Iwakuni, Japan, the official said.
Such flyovers are common when animosity rises on the Korean Peninsula, which is technically in a state of war because the 1950-53 Korean War ended with an armistice, not a peace treaty.
North Korea on Tuesday flew a potentially-nuclear capable Hwasong-12 intermediate range missile over northern Japan and later called it a "meaningful prelude" to containing the US territory of Guam.
Pyongyang had earlier threatened to fire a salvo of Hwasong-12s toward Guam, which is home to key US military bases and strategic long-range bombers the North finds threatening.
