In a rare tit-for-tat response, the U.S. and South Korea fired off eight “precision” missiles Monday, after a record barrage launched by nuclear-armed North Korea a day earlier, as tensions on the peninsula continue to rise.
The U.S. and South Korean militaries conducted the joint live-fire exercise early Monday, firing off eight surface-to-surface missiles into the Sea of Japan in a bid to “demonstrate the ability of the combined U.S.-ROK force to respond quickly to crisis events,” U.S. Forces Korea said in a statement, using the acronym for South Korea's formal name.
"The South Korea-U.S. combined firing of the ground-to-ground missiles demonstrated the capability and posture to launch immediate precision strikes on the origins of provocations and their command and support forces," the Yonhap news agency quoted the South Korean military as saying.