The U.S. military has revealed it conducted combined naval salvage drills with South Korea earlier this week, just a day before North Korea’s botched launch of what it claims to be a “space launch vehicle.”
The Pentagon’s Defense Visual Information Distribution Service released photos of Tuesday’s exercise, raising speculation that it might have taken place to practice procedures to retrieve wreckage from a potential North Korean rocket launch.
The joint dive and salvage exercise took place at a key naval base in Changwon, 298 kilometers southeast of Seoul, mobilizing a group of U.S. and South Korean Navy divers and the U.S. rescue and salvage ship USNS Salvor, according to the U.S. military.
On Wednesday, the North launched the projectile from Tongchang-ri on its west coast, which ended up crashing into the Yellow Sea after an “abnormal flight,” according to Seoul’s military.
The North’s state media reported that the rocket carrying a military satellite fell into the waters due to an engine problem and that the country plans to carry out a second launch in the near future.
Source: Yonhap News Agency