South Korea last week protested to the US over a rare stand-off between American and Chinese fighter jets in the Yellow Sea, according to media reports. Analysts said the move signalled Seoul was reluctant to see US forces stationed in South Korea more actively confront Beijing.
According to a Yonhap News Agency report on Saturday citing unnamed military sources, South Korean Defence Minister Ahn Gyu-back lodged a complaint with General Xavier Brunson, commander of US Forces Korea (USFK), “immediately” after receiving a report of last week’s stand-off.
The report said USFK had notified South Korea of its plan ahead of the exercise but had not offered details about the drills.
The incident was reported to have taken place on Wednesday and involved around 10 US F-16 fighters. The jets took off from Osan Air Base, about 65km (40 miles) south of Seoul, and flew west over the Yellow Sea as part of a training operation.
As the F-16s approached China’s air defence identification zone (ADIZ), Beijing scrambled its own fighter jets in what South Korean media described as a “brief” face-off.
China confirmed the incident on Tuesday. “The Chinese military tracked and monitored their activities and stayed on alert throughout the process, and responded to the situation in accordance with laws and regulations,” Mao Ning, a spokeswoman with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, told a regular press conference in Beijing.
The United States has yet to comment on the incident.
The stand-off came amid indications that the USFK is shifting its strategic focus from deterring North Korea to countering China.
Washington is also pushing its allies to take on a greater military role while increasing the flexibility of US forces in the region.
The USFK has traditionally been tasked with responding to conflict on the Korean peninsula rather than a Taiwan contingency. But Elbridge Colby, the US undersecretary of defence for policy, hinted while in South Korea this month at a possible restructuring to focus on the “first island chain”.
He was referring to the string of islands and archipelagos that run from Japan through Taiwan to the Philippines and the South China Sea. The Korean peninsula is not part of the first island chain.
“We are focused on building a military posture in the western Pacific that ensures that aggression along the first island chain is infeasible, that escalation is unattractive and war is indeed irrational,” Colby said at a think tank event in South Korea.
Dylan Loh, associate professor of foreign policy at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University, said South Korea’s protest highlighted the growing difficulty it faced in balancing ties with the US, its security ally, and China, its top trading partner.
“I think Seoul will not want Beijing to see itself as actively complicit and participating in any China ‘containment’ effort,” he said. “At the same time, it is facing pressure to broaden its security posture beyond simply North Korea.”
Loh suggested that the protest did not translate to a fundamental disagreement between Seoul and Washington, but “there is some variance in what the scope of US forces based in South Korea can do”.
The US has 28,500 service personnel stationed in South Korea, including the base at Osan.
Mong Cheung, a professor at the School of International Liberal Studies at Waseda University in Tokyo, said the South Korean protest reflected concerns over insufficient prior consultation between Seoul and Washington rather than a “fundamental rejection” of their security alliance.
“It highlights sensitivities in Seoul about transparency and coordination, especially when US actions could be interpreted as targeting China rather than deterring [North Korea],” he said.
“South Korea generally views US forces on its territory as primarily deterring North Korea, not as a forward base against China. It also remains cautious about crossing Beijing’s red lines on Taiwan,” he said.
Beijing sees Taiwan as part of China to be reunited by force if necessary. Most countries, including the US and South Korea, do not recognise Taiwan as an independent state, but Washington is opposed to any attempt to take the self-governed island by force and is committed to supplying it with weapons.
Cheung said South Korea still sought to maintain its alliance with the US while avoiding unnecessary provocation of Beijing. While the protest showed some divergence between Washington and its allies on their emphasis on China policy, it did not mean a “strategic rupture”.
“For China militarily, it means regional alignment against Beijing is not automatically coordinated under a coherent alliance management in this region,” he said.
-- From SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST
