ⓒYONHAP News

A prototype of South Korea's first homegrown KF-21 fighter jet has made its first successful flight, bringing the nation closer to its goal of mass producing the state-of-the-art military aircraft by 2026. 

According to the Air Force and the Defense Acquisition Program Administration(DAPA) on Tuesday, the KF-21 prototype with Major Ahn Jun-hyeon at the helm took off at around 3:40 p.m. and landed safely 33 minutes later at 4:13 p.m.

DAPA said the aircraft's first successful flight will pave the way for follow-up measures to completing the project to develop Korean jet fighters, including two-thousand additional test flights.

The feat was accomplished 22 years after former President Kim Dae-jung declared a plan to produce fighter jets with domestically-developed technologies. The eight-point-eight trillion-won project began in earnest in 2015 with the objective of replacing the Air Force's fleet of older F-4 and F-5 jets by 2032.

Upon completion of the jet development project, South Korea will become the world's eighth country to produce locally developed supersonic fighter jets.