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United States Forces Korea (USFK) and Chinese fighter jets were in a brief aerial standoff over the Yellow Sea earlier this week after a rare U.S. Air Force (USAF) exercise prompted China to scramble its own aircraft in response, South Korean military sources said Friday.
Several USFK F-16 fighter jets took off from Osan Air Base in Pyeongtaek, about 60 kilometers (37.28 miles) south of Seoul, late Wednesday and flew above international waters in the Yellow Sea, according to military sources cited by Yonhap news agency.
The F-16s flew into an area between the air defense identification zones of South Korea and China, prompting the Chinese military to dispatch its own fighter jets to the area. No clash occurred.
USFK notified the South Korean military of its plan ahead of the exercise but apparently did not elaborate on details, including the purpose of the drills, a source said.
South Korea's Defense Ministry said it could not verify military operations involving USFK assets.
"The USFK, alongside our military, maintains a powerful combined defense posture," a ministry official said.
USFK said it did not have any response to provide.
The drills come amid speculation that Washington will seek to redefine the role of U.S. Forces Korea as it pushes to focus on countering Chinese threats while urging allies to take on greater security burdens.
The U.S. National Defense Strategy released last month signaled a possible shift in U.S. force posture in South Korea, noting that the South is capable of taking "primary" responsibility to deter North Korea with "critical, but more limited" U.S. support—a shift it says is in line with America's interest in "updating" U.S. force posture on the Korean Peninsula.
USFK Commander General Xavier Brunson has mentioned the need for "flexibility" of the USFK as he introduced a map that puts the east at the top rather than 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 U.S. would need to penetrate in the event of crisis or contingency," Brunson said when introducing the map on Nov. 17 last year.
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