North Korea reveals pictures which country claims show their biggest ever live-fire drill

America has started to install a controversial anti-missile defence system in South Korea as President Donald Trump today summoned every US senator to the White House to attend a special briefing on North Korea.

It came as Kim Jong-un’s regime released images of what it claimed was the biggest live-fire military drill in the country’s history.

The South announced key parts of the Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense system, or THAAD, had been deployed as tensions - and military assets -continued to build in the region.

The USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier is also heading toward the peninsula for a joint exercise with South Korea.

North Korea conducted artillery drills yesterday to mark the 85th anniversary of the founding of its million-strong Korean People’s Army.

State media said the communist leader personally observed the exercises, which involved the firing of more than 300 large-caliber artillery pieces and included submarine torpedo-attacks on mock enemy warships.

The moves to set up THAAD within this year have angered not only North Korea, but also China, the country that the Trump administration hopes to work with to rid the North of nuclear weapons.

China, which has grown increasingly frustrated with its ally Pyongyang, and Russia see the system’s powerful radars as a security threat.

Along with sending US military assets to the region in a show of force, President Donald Trump has called on China to exert economic pressure on its ally.

China today launched a new aircraft carrier increasing its own military presence. The unnamed ship is the country’s second aircraft carrier, after the Liaoning, and the first to be made domestically.

Trump administration officials were due to brief the entire US Senate today. A rapid tempo of North Korean weapons testing in the past year has pushed Kim Jong Un’s authoritarian nation closer to developing a nuclear-tipped missile that could reach the U.S. mainland.

Republican Senator Lindsey Graham said Mr Trump will not allow North Korea to develop nuclear missiles that could reach the US mainland. He said the North should not underestimate the president’s resolve.

North Korea routinely accuses the United States of readying for an invasion, and threatens pre-emptive strikes to stop it.

An unnamed North Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman said the US administration’s policy to maximize pressure on North Korea was “little short of lighting the fuse of total war,” the state news agency reported.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson will chair a special meeting of the UN Security Council on Friday.