SEOUL
\nThe United States and its Asian allies flew dozens of fighter jets over waters surrounding the Korean Peninsula on Tuesday in a show of force as their diplomats discussed a coordinated response to a possibly imminent North Korean nuclear test.
\nThe flights came as U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman traveled to Seoul for discussions with South Korea and Japanese officials over the gathering North Korean threat and warned of a \u201cswift and forceful\u201d counterresponse if the North proceeds with a nuclear test explosion, which would be its first in nearly five years.
\nIf staged, the test could be another leap forward in North Korean leader Kim Jong Un\u2019s goal of building an arsenal that can viably threaten regional U.S. allies and the American homeland. That would escalate a pressure campaign aimed at forcing the United States to accept North Korea as a nuclear power and negotiating economic and security concessions from a position of strength.
\n\u201cAny nuclear test would be in complete violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions. There would be a swift and forceful response to such a test,\u201d Sherman said after meeting with South Korean Vice Foreign Minister Cho Hyun-dong. \u201cWe continue to urge Pyongyang to cease its destabilizing and provocative activities and choose the path of diplomacy.\u201d
\nSherman and Cho are planning a three-way meeting with Japanese Vice Foreign Minister Mori Takeo on Wednesday over the North Korean nuclear issue.
\nExtending the countries\u2019 joint displays of military might, four U.S. F-16 fighter jets flew in formation with 16 South Korean planes \u2014 including F-35A stealth fighters \u2014 over waters off South Korea\u2019s eastern coast, an exercise aimed at demonstrating an ability to quickly respond to North Korean provocations, South Korea\u2019s Joint Chiefs of Staff said. The United States and Japan conducted a separate drill involving six aircraft \u2014 four Japanese F-15 fighters and two American F-16s \u2014 above waters between the Korean Peninsula and Japan, Japan\u2019s Defense Ministry said.
\nThe flights came a day after U.S. and South Korean forces fired eight surface-to-surface missiles into South Korea\u2019s eastern waters to match a weekend missile display by North Korea, which fired the same number of weapons from multiple locations Sunday in what was likely its biggest single-day testing event.
\nNorth Korea has conducted 18 rounds of missile launches in 2022 alone \u2014 including its first demonstrations of intercontinental ballistic missiles since 2017 \u2014 exploiting a favorable environment to push forward weapons development, with the Security Council effectively paralyzed over Russia\u2019s war on Ukraine.
\nNorth Korea may soon up the ante as U.S. and South Korean officials say it is all but ready to conduct another detonation at its nuclear testing ground in the northeastern town of Punggye-ri. Its last such test and sixth overall was in September 2017, when it claimed to have detonated a thermonuclear bomb designed for its ICBMs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
SEOUL The United States and its Asian allies flew dozens of fighter jets over waters surrounding the Korean Peninsula on Tuesday in a show of force as their diplomats discussed a coordinated response to a possibly imminent North Korean nuclear test. The flights came as U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman traveled to Seoul […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":265000,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6],"tags":[4197,8253,7400,3942,2611,444],"class_list":{"0":"post-264983","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-allies","9":"tag-fighter-jets","10":"tag-fly","11":"tag-north-korea","12":"tag-tensions","13":"tag-us"},"yoast_head":"\n