Bombs away over Korean Peninsula
Nations wrap up military drills as tensions with North build
SEOUL, South Korea — The United States and South Korea wrapped up their annual joint military exercises Thursday by flying some of their most powerful warplanes in bombing drills in a show of force two days after North Korea fired a ballistic missile over Japan.
Two B-1B supersonic bombers and four F-35 stealth fighter jets from the U.S. Air Force and Marine Corps joined four South Korean F-15 fighter jets in live-fire bombing exercises over a military range in eastern South Korea, officials said.
On their way to join the South Korean jets, the U.S. warplanes flew with two F-15s from Japan’s Self-Defense Forces over waters near the southwestern Japanese island of Kyushu, the U.S. Pacific Command said in a statement.
“This complex mission clearly demonstrates our solidarity with our allies and underscores the broadening cooperation to defend against this common regional threat,” said Gen. Terrence O’Shaughnessy, commander of the U.S. Pacific Air Forces, referring to North Korea.
South Korean F-15s conducted a similar bombing drill over the same range Tuesday, hours after a Hwasong-12 intermediate-range ballistic missile from North Korea flew over northern Japan and splashed into the Pacific after a flight of nearly 1,700 miles.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said Wednesday that the missile launch could be a “curtain raiser” for more such tests in the Pacific. The missile test rattled a region increasingly concerned about North Korea’s fast-advancing missile capabilities and its increasingly bold way of demonstrating them.
Kim said he would watch the United States’ actions before deciding whether to
conduct more missile tests, including in waters around Guam, a U.S. territory that is home to Andersen Air Force Base, from which the B-1B Lancer bombers participating in Thursday’s drills took off. The F-35 jets flew from a U.S. base in Iwakuni, Japan.
Hours after Kim’s warning, the United States conducted what it called a previously planned missile-defense test, intercepting a medium-range ballistic missile fired from a Navy guided-missile destroyer off the coast of Hawaii.
Late Wednesday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson spoke by phone, with Lavrov urging all parties to avoid a military solution to the crisis and adding that Moscow views any new potential sanctions against North Korea as “counterproductive and dangerous.”
Russia’s Foreign Ministry said in a readout of the call late Wednesday that both Lavrov and Tillerson condemned North Korea for the most recent launch and called for dialogue.
The Ulchi-Freedom Guardian, the 11-day joint military exercises the United States and South Korea completed Thursday, involved tens of thousands of U.S. and South Korean troops, though the exercises were conducted largely through computer simulations.
Whenever such joint exercises take place, North Korea accuses the South and the United States of preparing for an invasion and often conducts its own military exercises and missile tests.
As tensions mounted from the military maneuvers, a handful of Americans on Thursday left Pyongyang on a flight to Beijing, a day before the start of a U.S. ban on American citizens going to North Korea.
Among those on the flight from the North Korean capital were aid workers who hoped to be allowed to return to continue their humanitarian mission.
President Donald Trump’s administration announced in July that it was barring American citizens from traveling to North Korea starting today over concerns about detentions of Americans who travel there. Earlier this year, U.S. citizen Otto Warmbier was sent home in a coma and later died after spending more than a year in North Korean detention.
Overall, though nearly all Americans who have gone to North Korea have left without incident, at least 16 have been detained in the past decade, American officials say.
The ban includes potential exceptions for journalists and humanitarian workers, and it expires after one year unless it’s extended.