The staff headquarters said the military planes did not violate South Korean airspace and were a joint Russian-Chinese exercise, the details of which are subject to further analysis.
Yonhap News Agency reported Tuesday that the South Korean military said the Chinese side informed the plan to conduct routine training through a direct phone call between South Korea and China before the military planes entered, and that the South Korean military deployed air force fighters to take normal tactical measures long before the Chinese planes flew in.
South Korea’s Defense Ministry has reportedly expressed concern to the Chinese and Russian military attachés in South Korea over a wired phone call regarding the matter.
Yonhap said the South Korean Joint Staff Headquarters disclosed that four Chinese PLA aircraft suspected to be Boom-6s flew into the South Korean Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) west of the island of Leyu (known as Suyan Reef in China) in sequence just after 8 a.m. Tuesday, with two of them flying out of the ADIZ via eastern Ulleungdo.
The report said that 15 Russian military aircraft, including Sukhoi series warplanes, Tu-95 bombers and A-50 early warning aircraft, also flew into the air defense identification zone in the eastern waters of South Korea in turn from the north, and two of them flew out of the air defense identification zone by moving from Dokdo, then reentered and finally flew out of the zone from the northeast of Dokdo. All of the Russian and Chinese military aircraft flew out of the Korean air defense zone at around 3:20 p.m. that day.
A similar incident occurred on July 23 last year when Russia and China conducted their first joint air patrol in the Asia-Pacific region. On that day, two Chinese Boom-6K bombers joined three Russian military aircraft near the northern boundary of the Sea of Japan and then entered the Japan-Korea air defense identification zone southward, prompting Japanese and South Korean military aircraft to take off to intercept and monitor them.
On the same day, South Korean Defense Ministry officials said in Seoul that South Korean warplanes fired hundreds of machine gun rounds at the Russian A-50 aircraft to warn them, saying it was the first time a Russian military aircraft had intruded into South Korean airspace. The South Korean Air Force made more than 20 warning broadcasts to Chinese military aircraft and more than 10 to Russian military aircraft, but neither side answered.
Both Russia and China denied that military aircraft flew into South Korean airspace.
After the incident last July, South Korea’s Cheong Wa Dae said it lodged a serious protest with Russia after the Russian military plane violated South Korean airspace and said it would take stronger action if such an incident occurred again. Japan and South Korea also summoned the Chinese and Russian ambassadors in Japan and South Korea respectively to protest the incident.
Recent Comments