Seoul scrambles jets after detecting 180 North Korea warplanes

SEOUL: South Korea´s military scrambled stealth jets on Friday after detecting the mobilisation of 180 North Korean warplanes, Seoul said, following a record-breaking blitz of missile tests by Pyongyang this week.

It comes a day after North Korea conducted a failed intercontinental ballistic missile test and follows a decision by Seoul and Washington to extend through Saturday their largest-ever joint air drills, a military exercise that has infuriated Pyongyang.

“Our military detected around 180 North Korean warplanes” mobilised in Pyongyang´s airspace, Seoul´s Joint Chiefs of Staff said, adding that Seoul “scrambled 80 fighter jets including F-35As” while jets involved in the joint drills were also “maintaining readiness”.

Shortly after South Korea announced the decision to extend the joint drills on Thursday, Pyongyang launched three more short-range ballistic missiles, calling the decision “a very dangerous and wrong choice”.

Hours later, the North fired 80 artillery rounds that landed in a maritime “buffer zone”, Seoul´s military said. The barrage was a “clear violation” of the 2018 agreement that established the buffer zone in a bid to reduce tensions between the two sides, Seoul´s Joints Chiefs of Staff said.

The artillery fire came after Pyongyang fired about 30 missiles on Wednesday and Thursday, including an intercontinental ballistic missile and one that landed near South Korea´s territorial waters for the first time since the end of the Korean War in 1953.

US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin described Pyongyang´s ICBM launch as “illegal and destabilising”, and Seoul and Washington vowed to pursue new measures to demonstrate their “determination and capabilities” against the North´s growing threats. Experts and officials have said Pyongyang is ramping up its tests in protest over the US-South Korean drills.