US flies bomber for joint drills with SK and Japan

The United States flew a long-range bomber for joint drills with South Korea and Japan on Wednesday in a show of force against North Korea, days after the North performed its first interconnectional ballistic missile test in five months.

The trilateral training off South Korea’s southern island of Jeju was meant to strengthen the countries’ joint response against North Korean nuclear threats, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement. The exercise involved a B-1B bomber and South Korean and Japanese fighter jets, the statement said. It said the B-1B’s flyover is the 13th time that a US bomber has been temporarily deployed near and over the Korean Peninsula this year. A B-1B is capable of carrying a large conventional weapons payload. North Korean has previously called the bomber’s deployment a proof of US hostility and had reacted with missile tests.

North Korea on Monday launched a Hwasong-18 ICBM into the sea in a drill it said was meant as a warning over the US and South Korea’s confrontational steps.