South Korea scrambles 30 warplanes as North flies fighter jets after missile launches
This came shortly after USS Ronald Reagan, a US Navy aircraft carrier strike group sailed into the East Sea waters or the Japan Sea off the Korean Peninsula.
South Korea on Thursday said that at least 12 North Korean warplanes were flown near its border, which prompted it to launch 30 fighter jets in response, the Associated Press reported. As many as eight North Korean fighter jets and four bombers flew in formation, said South Korean military, adding that North Korean planes likely conducted air-to-surface firing drills.
This came shortly after USS Ronald Reagan, a US Navy aircraft carrier strike group sailed into the East Sea waters or the Japan Sea off the Korean Peninsula in response to DPRK’s launch of ballistic missiles fired over Japan that landed in the Pacific. North Korea has now sent the fighter jets in stronger reaction to the US and its apparently hostile neighbour South Korea’s provocative military escalation.
South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff had said in a statement that the US carrier strike group was being redeployed to the waterway in a defiant posture to North’s belligerence. Describing the recent spate of missile firing as “very unusual,” Seoul’s Joint Chiefs of Staff added that the military action was aimed at “demonstrating the resolute will of the Soutk Korea-US alliance to respond decisively to any provocation or threat from North Korea.”
Firm will’ of the US and South Korean alliance
While Ronald Reagan Carrier Strike Group sailed into the Sea of Japan, off the Korean peninsula’s east coast, its “operations” remained unknown as of Thursday. The deployment was aimed at deterring North Korea as it fired an intermediate-range ballistic missile for the first test since 2017 in order to assert pressure against its nuclear programme.
The launches were made 22 minutes apart from the North’s capital region, prompting South Korea to bolster its surveillance posture and maintain readiness in coordination with its ally the United States, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement. The move demonstrates the “firm will” of the US and South Korean alliance, the Associated Press quoted South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff as saying.
Tensions between the two Koreas ripened as the United States at the Security Council meeting slammed its “two permanent members” allies [without naming Russia and China] for enabling North Korea by not supporting the move to strengthen UNSC sanctions over its ballistic missile programs.
“The DPRK (North Korea) has enjoyed blanket protection from two members of this council,” US Ambassador to the United Nations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, said at the UN. “In short, two permanent members of the Security Council have enabled Kim Jong Un,” she added.
