US sorties for South Korea in show of solidarity

North Korea will read the fly-over of a bomber capable of delivering nuclear weapons at Osan Air Base near Seoul, as a threat. Any hint of America’s nuclear power enrages Pyongyang, which links its own pursuit of atomic weapons to what it sees as past nuclear-backed moves by the United States to topple its authoritarian government. 

The B-52 was joined by South Korean F-15 and U.S. F-16 fighters and returned to its base in Guam after the flight, the U.S. military said. “This was a demonstration of the ironclad U.S. commitment to our allies in South Korea, in Japan, and to the defence of the American homeland,” said Adm. Harry B. Harris Jr., commander U.S. Pacific Command, in a statement. “North Korea’s nuclear test is a blatant violation of its international obligations.” 

The B-52 flight follows a victory tour by North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to celebrate the country’s widely disputed claim of a hydrogen bomb test. Kim is seeking to rally pride in an explosion viewed with outrage by much of the world and to boost his domestic political goals. There was no immediate reaction from North Korea’s state media to the B-52 flyover, which also happened after North Korea’s third nuclear test in 2013. World powers are looking for ways to punish the North over a nuclear test that, even if not of a hydrogen bomb, still likely pushes Pyongyang closer to its goal of a nuclear-armed missile that can reach the U.S. mainland. Many outside governments and experts question whether the blast was in fact a powerful hydrogen test. 

In the wake of the test on Wednesday, the two Koreas have settled into the kind of Cold War-era standoff that has defined their relationship over the past seven decades. Since Friday, South Korea has been blasting anti-Pyongyang propaganda from huge speakers along the border, and the North is reportedly using speakers of its own in an attempt to keep its soldiers from hearing the South Korean messages.

A top North Korean ruling party official’s recent warning that the South’s broadcasts have pushed the Korean Peninsula “toward the brink of war” is typical of Pyongyang’s over-thetop rhetoric. But it is also indicative of the real fury that the broadcasts, which criticize the country’s revered dictatorship, cause in the North. 

North Korea considers the South Korean broadcasts tantamount to an act of war. South Korean troops, near about 10 sites where loudspeakers started blaring propaganda Friday, were on the highest alert, but have not detected any unusual movement from North Korea along the border, said an official from Seoul’s Defence Ministry