Chinese, Russian military aircraft cross South Korea air defence zone briefly

South Korea’s military announced that nine Chinese and Russian military aircraft briefly entered and exited the country’s air defence identification zone (KADIZ) over waters to the east and south on December 9.

According to the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), two Chinese planes and seven Russian aircraft successively entered the KADIZ at around 10 a.m., prompting South Korean Air Force fighter jets to be deployed as a precaution against potential accidents, Caliber.Az reports, citing Yonhap News Agency.

The JCS confirmed that the aircraft did not cross into South Korea’s territorial airspace and were detected before entering the defence zone. The KADIZ is a designated area, not sovereign airspace, where foreign aircraft are asked to identify themselves to avoid accidental confrontations.

The military planes, which included bombers and fighter jets, moved in and out of the zone intermittently over roughly an hour before fully retreating, a JCS official said.

Since 2019, China and Russia have occasionally sent military aircraft into the KADIZ during joint exercises once or twice a year without prior notice. In the most recent occurrence, 11 planes from both countries entered the zone together in November of last year.

The Korea Air Defence Identification Zone (KADIZ) was originally drawn in 1951 by the United States Air Force during the Korean War as a buffer zone to give early warning of aerial threats approaching the Korean Peninsula.

In December 2013, Republic of Korea Ministry of National Defence expanded the KADIZ southward — for the first time in over sixty years — to include remote islands and the submerged reef Ieodo (also known as Socotra Rock), partly in response to a newly declared overlapping air defence zone by People's Republic of China Ministry of National Defence (China) in the East China Sea.

By Jeyhun Aghazada