hankyoreh

By Park Byong-su, senior staff writer

Seoul is taking action after learning that combined Chinese and Russian naval exercises scheduled for this week overlap with the South Korean Air Defense Identification Zone (KADIZ).

China and Russia launched their combined weeklong Joint Sea-2014 naval exercises on May 20 in the waters east of China’s Yangtze River estuary, Ministry of National Defense spokesperson Kim Min-seok announced the same day.

“The navigation ban zone announced by China as the site of its navy training and live-fire exercises partially overlaps with the South Korean Air Defense Identification Zone and the Japanese Air Defense Identification Zone [JADIZ],” Kim explained.

This is the first time China has held military exercises in waters overlapping the KADIZ or JADIZ.

Because air defense identification zones are drawn unilaterally at the periphery of sovereign airspace for military reasons, their basis in international law is unclear - unlike airspace, where exclusive sovereignty applies. But the possibility of an unintended military clash does exist, depending on the response from South Korea or Japan.

While part of the waters used for the Chinese-Russian exercises falls within KADIZ, Seoul currently believes it has few grounds in international law to stop the exercises because of the encroachment on its airspace.

But military authorities have heightened their monitoring and reconnaissance of the exercises, with surveillance aircraft sent into the area just in case.

The Ministry of National Defense also reported summoning a military attache from the Chinese embassy in Seoul to ask for “notification on the content of the exercises in the interest of preventing an unintended clash between South Korean-Chinese military aircrafts.”

The joint Chinese-Russian exercises appear to be targeting the Senkaku (Diaoyu in Chinese) Islands, the subject of a territorial dispute between China and Japan.

“In the past, China and Russia have typically had their military exercises in the West (Yellow) Sea,” said a military official on condition of anonymity. “This is the first case I know of where they are training in the East China Sea near the Senkaku Islands.”

Another of China’s aims may be to assert the air defense identification zone it announced last November by effectively neutralizing those of South Korea and Japan.

For the exercises, China sent eight surface ships, two submersibles, nine fixed-wing aircraft, and six shipboard helicopters, while Russia sent six surface ships.

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