U.S. B-1B bomber holds bombing drill in South Korea for first time in 7 years

A U.S. B-1B bomber took part in a bombing exercise in South Korea for the first time in seven years on Wednesday, a day after Seoul announced it would stop abiding by an inter-Korean military pact in response to multiple "provocations" by Pyongyang.

A U.S. B-1B supersonic strategic bomber, left, flies under escort from South Korean F-15K multirole fighters in the skies above the Korean Peninsula during a joint bombing drill held on Wednesday. [DEFENSE MINISTRY]

A U.S. B-1B bomber took part in an aerial bombing exercise in South Korea for the first time in seven years on Wednesday, a day after Seoul announced it would no longer abide by an inter-Korean military pact in response to multiple "provocations" by Pyongyang.

According to the Defense Ministry, the B-1B bomber dropped Joint Direct Attack Munitions at an unspecified location in the country while under escort by South Korean F-15K fighter jets.

The B-1B supersonic strategic bomber has a flight range of 11,998 kilometers (7,455 miles) at a maximum speed of Mach 1.25. Guided weapons launched from a B-1B can strike military bases and command centers hundreds of miles away from the bomber.

At least one B-1B bomber also participated in a joint allied drill that involved F-35A stealth fighters and KF-16 multirole fighters from the South Korean Air Force and F-35B and F-16 fighter jets from the U.S. military, but the ministry did not specify the number of bombers.

Wednesday’s bombing exercise was the first to be held in South Korea since 2017 and took place amid heightened tensions over multiple actions carried out by North Korea in recent days.

South Korea has accused the North of violating the armistice that ended active hostilities in the 1950-53 Korean War by jamming GPS signals along the inter-Korean border and flying almost 1,000 trash-laden balloons into the South over the past week.

The North also attempted to launch a spy satellite into orbit on May 27 and fired 10 short-range ballistic missiles into the East Sea on May 30, violating United Nations Security Council resolutions that forbid it from conducting launches or tests that involve ballistic missile technology.

In response, President Yoon Suk Yeol on Tuesday approved a motion to suspend Seoul’s participation in a 2018 inter-Korean military agreement. After that, the country’s Defense Ministry also announced it would “no longer be bound” by the accord.

According to military officials, the South is now likely to resume live-fire artillery drills near the military demarcation line (MDL) that divides the peninsula as well as South Korean islands along the Northern Limit Line (NLL), which serves as the de facto maritime boundary between the Koreas in the Yellow Sea and East Sea.

Under the terms of the 2018 agreement, both Koreas were prohibited from conducting field maneuvers involving units larger than a single regiment or live artillery drills within a buffer zone that extended 5 kilometers from either side of the MDL and NLL.

Military sources who spoke on condition of anonymity said Marines stationed in Baengnyeong and Yeonpyeong islands plan to conduct live-fire drills involving K-9 howitzers for the first time in nearly six years.

The South Korean military had mostly refrained from conducting exercises involving live artillery fire on either island as they both lie less than 2 kilometers (1.5 miles) from the NLL and under 15 kilometers from the North Korean mainland.

Four South Koreans, including two civilians, were killed when the North shelled Yeonpyeong Island in 2010 after a South Korean artillery drill in the area.

Meanwhile, Seoul’s National Intelligence Service (NIS) said Wednesday it detected signs that the North is dismantling sections of the eastern inter-Korean rail line on its side of the border to remove vestiges of past inter-Korean cooperation.

The two Koreas agreed at the first inter-Korean summit of 2000 to restore the Gyeongui Line on the western side of the peninsula and the Donghae Line on the eastern coast.

But North Korean leader Kim Jong-un declared at the end of last year that Pyongyang should only view ties with Seoul as relations “between two states hostile to each other.”

The Unification Ministry said last week that North Korea could announce more measures to sever ties with the South after its rubber-stampe parliament convenes and approves revisions to the regime’s constitution and territorial boundaries.

BY MICHAEL LEE [lee.junhyuk@joongang.co.kr]