South Korea said on Tuesday that it had scrambled fighter jets in response to seven Russian and two Chinese military planes entering its air defense zone.
The Korea Air Defence Identification Zone (KADIZ) was established the better part of a century ago during the Korean War. Although the KADIZ is monitored by South Korea’s military for the early detection of threats to its territorial airspace, it extends beyond it.
South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said that the Russian and Chinese planes entered the KADIZ (although not its territorial airspace) at around 10 a.m. local time (3 a.m. Kyiv time), as per Reuters.
Once the planes were identified, the South Korean jets were deployed “in case of contingencies,” the JCS added.
According to AFP, Russia and China have flown into the KADIZ on several occasions without notice since 2019, as part of joint military exercises between the two countries.
Russia’s defense ministry confirmed that Tuesday’s incident was part of one such exercise.
“At certain stages of the route, the strategic bombers were followed by fighter jets from foreign states,” they said.
China and Russia are both allied with North Korea, South Korea’s longtime enemy. Unlike Beijing, Moscow, or Pyongyang, Seoul has aligned itself with Ukraine.
Pyongyang has even sent troops to fight in Russia’s war against Ukraine. The fate of North Korean troops taken prisoner in Ukraine, some of whom wish to seek asylum in South Korea, poses a complicated question for Seoul.
A JCS official told South Korean news agency Yonhap that the Russian and Chinese aircraft intermittently entered and left the KADIZ for about an hour before completely retreating from the air defense zone.
Although South Korea’s sovereign airspace was not violated, Tuesday’s incident could be linked to a wider pattern of provocations by Russian drones and aircraft along NATO’s eastern flank in recent months.