US, Japan, S Korea Hold Air Drills After North Korea's Ballistic Missile Launch

The United States and Japan held combined air drills with South Korea, days after North Korea fired an intercontinental ballistic missile, the South Korean military said.

The trilateral exercise was held on Sunday in airspace north of South Korea's southern island of Jeju, the military said as per Yonhap news outlet. The three nations conducted similar drills earlier too this year.

Pyongyang fired the new Hwasong-19 ICBM into the East Sea on Thursday in its first launch of a long-range ballistic missile this year.

The ICBM is reported to be capable of reaching the US mainland and the launch comes ahead of presidential polls.

Japan Air Self-Defence Force's F-2 fighter jets, South Korean F-15s and at least one US Air Force B-1B strategic bomber participated in the exercise, the military said.

The exercise was held over waters where the air defence identification zones of South Korea and Japan overlap, the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said as cited by Yonhap.

The drills also involved the heavy bomber striking a simulated target in a show of its "overwhelming" capabilities, according to the JCS. It did not specify the number of B-1Bs involved.

North Korea launched an ICBM on October 31 and the exercise was in response, JCS said in a release.

"Amid gradually increasing security cooperation between the three countries, (we) will strengthen coordination to deter and jointly respond to North Korea's threats," it said in the statement cited by Yonhap.

Notably, tensions have been escalating on the Korean Peninsula against a backdrop of Pyongyang's nuclear and missile development.

North Korean state media on Friday said that a missile it test-fired a day earlier was a new intercontinental ballistic missile called the Hwasong-19, Kyodo reported.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un "expressed great satisfaction" at the test-firing of the new missile and termed it the "ultimate version" of an ICBM. He also said his country's "hegemonic position" in the development of means for nuclear delivery is "absolutely irreversible," according to the official Korean Central News Agency.

Kim, who oversaw the test at the site, pledged that his country will "never change" its stance of bolstering its nuclear forces, KCNA said on Thursday. (ANI)