U.S. flies surveillance plane over peninsula on N.K.'s founding anniversary

SEOUL, Sept. 9 (Yonhap) -- A U.S. surveillance aircraft flew over South Korea on Wednesday, an aviation tracker said, on an apparent mission to monitor North Korea on the state's founding anniversary.

The U.S. Army's Artemis CL-600 was spotted in the skies over the capital area at 12:54 p.m., No Callsign tweeted.

The Artemis is the U.S. Army's first manned aerial reconnaissance jet, standing for the Airborne Reconnaissance and Targeting Multi-Mission Intelligence System.

It "provides high-altitude sensing capabilities against near peer adversaries," the U.S. Army Program Executive Office said in a Facebook post last month.

The flight came as North Korea marked the 72nd anniversary of its state founding, apparently without major celebratory events as the country has been struggling to recover from damage wrought by recent back-to-back typhoons.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un presided over an enlarged meeting of the Central Military Commission of the ruling Workers' Party on Tuesday and discussed damage in an eastern mining area hit by last week's typhoon, state media reported.

Seoul officials said no unusual military activities related to the anniversary have been detected in the North.

scaaet@yna.co.kr
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