North Korea: ‘Imminent war’: US’s dire warning

THE United States flew some of its most advanced warplanes in bombing drills with ally South Korea on Thursday, a clear warning after North Korea launched a mid-range ballistic missile designed to carry nuclear bombs over Japan earlier this week, the US and South Korean militaries said.

North Korea hates such displays of US military might at close range and will likely respond with fury.

Two US B-1B supersonic bombers and four F-35B stealth fighter jets joined four South Korean F-15 fighters in live-fire exercises at a military field in eastern South Korea that simulated precision strikes against the North’s “core facilities,” according to the US Pacific Command and South Korea’s Defence Ministry.

The B-1Bs were flown in from Andersen Air Force Base in Guam while the F-35Bs came from a US base in Iwakuni, Japan.

North Korea, which claims Washington has long threatened it by flaunting the powerful US nuclear arsenal, describes the long-range B-1Bs as “nuclear strategic bombers” although the United States no longer arms them with nuclear weapons.

Hours after the announcements by Washington and Seoul, North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency issued a short statement calling the exercises a “rash act of those taken aback” by North Korea’s recent missile launch.

Kim’s blast came as he ordered his troops to prepare for an “imminent war” with the US.

Officers are ordering their troops to supplement their meagre food rations by plundering local fields, in order to keep up their strength for battle, according to a report in the Daily NK.

“The military officers are instructing their soldiers, exhausted after training, to eat corn in the fields because war is imminent,” a source in North Hamgyong Province told the news website.

“They are even threatening their soldiers, saying: if you become malnourished despite permission to eat the corn, you will face difficulties.”

The duelling military displays open up the risk that things will get worse as each side seeks to show it won’t be intimidated.

North Korea has made it clear that it sees its weapons program, which demands regular testing to perfect, as the only way to contest decades of US hostility, by which it means the huge US military presence in South Korea, Japan and the Pacific.

Washington, in turn, seeks with its joint drills with Seoul and bomber flights to show that it will not be pushed from its traditional role of supremacy in the region.

Source: North Korea: US warning dismissed as ‘rash act’ | Perth Now