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SEOUL — North Korea on Tuesday warned of taking a "corresponding" measure against the deployment of US strategic assets to the Korean Peninsula ahead of a US heavy bomber's flight over a South Korean air base.
The warning by Kim Kang-il, North Korea's Vice Defence Msinister, came hours before the US heavy bomber flew over Seoul Air Base for a ceremony marking South Korea's Armed Forces Day in an apparent show of force, Yonhap news agency reported.
"Now that the US unannounced deployment of strategic assets has fixed as an incurable bad habit, a measure of unpredictable strategic nature corresponding to it should be an inevitable and legitimate right of a sovereign state," Kim said in a statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency.
"Fresh methods of adding serious concern to the security of the US mainland should be surely produced," Kim said. "The armed forces of the DPRK will never remain a passive onlooker to the military provocative acts of the hostile forces escalated in three dimensions in the Korean peninsula and its vicinities, but take a thoroughgoing action corresponding to them."
DPRK stands for the North's official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
North Korea has often reacted angrily against the deployment of key US military assets to the Korean Peninsula.
In June, North Korea said it was open to taking "overwhelming and fresh" deterrence measures after the arrival of the USS Theodore Roosevelt aircraft carrier in South Korea's southeastern port of Busan.