Seoul, February 21 – South Korea's Defence Minister, Ahn Gyu-back, has formally protested to the United States Forces Korea (USFK) earlier this week over a brief encounter with Chinese fighter jets during a rare joint military exercise, according to military sources on Saturday.
Minister Ahn Gyu-back reportedly lodged a complaint by calling General Xavier Brunson, the commander of the Combined Forces Command and the USFK, immediately after receiving a report of the incident on Wednesday, according to the sources.
General Jin Young-sung, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, also reportedly lodged a complaint in a call with General Brunson, they added.
On Wednesday, US and Chinese fighter jets engaged in a rare encounter over the Yellow Sea during a training operation by the US Air Force, which involved approximately 10 USFK F-16 fighter jets, according to Yonhap news agency.
The F-16 jets reportedly flew into an area between the respective air defense identification zones of South Korea and China, prompting the Chinese military to dispatch its own fighter jets to the scene, but no clash occurred.
The USFK had informed the South Korean military of its plan in advance of the exercise, but apparently did not provide details, including the purpose of the drills, officials said.
The latest drills come amid speculation that Washington will seek to redefine the role of the USFK as it pushes to focus on countering Chinese threats while urging allies to take on greater security responsibilities.
The US National Defence Strategy released last month signaled a possible shift in US force posture in South Korea, noting that South Korea is capable of taking "primary" responsibility to deter North Korea with "critical, but more limited" US support – a shift that it says is in line with America's interest in "updating" US force posture on the Korean Peninsula.
USFK Commander General Xavier Brunson has also mentioned the need for "flexibility" of the USFK as he introduced a map that puts the east at the top rather than the standard north-up mapping.
"Forces already positioned on the Korean Peninsula are revealed not as distant assets requiring reinforcement, but as troops already positioned inside the bubble perimeter that the US would need to penetrate in the event of crisis or contingency," he said, as he introduced the map on November 17 last year.
