North Korea exercises striking US, South Korean targets
North Korea says it responded to the South and the United States' recent drawn-out war games by exercising striking key enemy targets.
The six-day war games, which were codenamed Vigilant Storm, ended on Saturday. They featured nearly 240 warplanes conducting about 1,600 sorties. The US Air Force has boasted that the exercises were unprecedented in their sheer scale.
The North's military said on Monday that the exercises were an "open provocation aimed at intentionally escalating the tension" and "a dangerous war drill of very high aggressive nature," the North's Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported.
The military added that it had responded with measures simulating striking enemy air bases and warplanes.
Throughout the course of the joint exercises, the North test-fired multiple missiles, including a possible failed intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), and hundreds of artillery shells into the sea.
The North Korean military also said it had even drilled hitting a major South Korean city to "smash the enemies' persistent war hysteria."
It confirmed firing two apparently nuclear-capable "strategic" cruise missiles on November 2 toward the waters off Ulsan, the southeastern coastal city housing a nuclear power plant and large factory parks.
The operations also included a launch of two "tactical ballistic missiles loaded with dispersion warheads," a test of a "special functional warhead paralyzing the operation command system of the enemy," and an "all-out combat sortie" involving 500 fighter jets.
"The more persistently the enemies' provocative military moves continue, the more thoroughly and mercilessly the KPA (the Korean People's Army) will counter them," it concluded.
Washington and Seoul have markedly stepped up their muscle-flexing near the North's maritime border and airspace, as means of deterring another nuclear test by Pyongyang, which conducted its last such test in 2017.
North Korea considers the drills to be an exercise for a pending invasion, and has been conducting a flurry of back-to-back missile launches, artillery fire drills, and aerial exercises since the beginning of this year.
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