Competing drills in East Sea reflect growing bloc rivalry

The waters surrounding the Korean Peninsula appear increasingly crowded with dueling military drills that highlight the hardening divide between the United States and its regional allies on one side, and China and Russia on the other.

Aegis-equipped destroyers ROKS Yulgok Yi I, left, USS John Finn, center, and JS Maya, right, take part in a trilateral missile defense exercise by South Korean, U.S. and Japanese naval forces in the East Sea on Sunday. [REPUBLIC OF KOREA NAVY]

The waters surrounding the Korean Peninsula appear increasingly crowded with dueling military drills that highlight the hardening divide between the United States and its regional allies on one side, and China and Russia on the other.

On Sunday, South Korea, the United States and Japan staged a joint missile defense exercise in the East Sea, four days after the North fired a solid-fuel intercontinental ballistic missile into the sea just outside Japan’s exclusive economic zone.

The trilateral exercise also took place a day after Beijing’s defense ministry said Moscow will send an air force and naval contingent to take part in the Northern/Interaction-2023 exercise in the East Sea, which is to be held by the Northern Theater Command of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) at an unspecified date.

Seoul, Washington and Tokyo agreed last year to deepen security cooperation in the face of saber-rattling by Pyongyang, whose leader Kim Jong-un vowed to carry out an “even stronger military offensive” against the United States and the South, according to the North’s state-controlled Korean Central News Agency on Thursday.

Sunday’s drill was the fourth trilateral missile defense exercise to take place under the Yoon Suk Yeol administration, which has pushed for heightened security cooperation with Tokyo after a years-long chill in bilateral relations over Korean court decisions ordering Japanese companies to compensate Korean forced labor victims.

During the exercise, personnel aboard three Aegis-equipped destroyers — ROKS Yulgok Yi I, USS John Finn and JS Maya — practiced detecting missile launches, tracking a computer-simulated ballistic missile target, and sharing relevant information with each other, according to the South Korean Navy.

“This exercise served as an opportunity to enhance our military’s response capabilities against ballistic missiles and improve security cooperation between South Korea, the United States and Japan,” said a South Korean Navy official who spoke to reporters on condition of anonymity.

The official also said that the South Korean military “will meet North Korea’s nuclear and missile threats with a powerful response system and trilateral coordination.”

But whereas cooperation between South Korea, the United States and Japan is aimed at countering the North’s missile launches, China’s upcoming joint exercise with Russia appears to have a different, geographic dimension, with Beijing’s defense ministry saying the drill would focus on “maintaining the security of strategic maritime corridors.”

“This joint exercise aims at enhancing the level of strategic cooperation between the Chinese and Russian militaries, as well as strengthening both sides’ ability to jointly safeguard regional peace and stability when dealing with various security challenges,” the ministry said in a statement.

Although the exercise was first announced on June 9 by Liu Zhenli, head of China’s joint staff department, and Valery Gerasimov, the Russian military’s chief of general staff, the statement by Beijing’s defense ministry confirms the involvement of both Russia’s navy and air force.

The choice of the East Sea as the location of the joint exercise also underlines Beijing and Moscow’s suspicions that trilateral cooperation between Washington and its regional allies is aimed at blocking Chinese and Russian access to the western Pacific in the event of a conflict over Taiwan.

Song Zhongping, a former PLA instructor, told the South China Morning Post that the “strategic maritime corridors” mentioned by the Chinese defense ministry refer to the Tsushima Strait near Korea and the Soya and Tsugaru straits in northern Japan, which could become “possible barriers,” or choke points closed to China and Russia in the event of armed hostilities.

Russia also led its own multinational exercise in the East Sea last year, which was joined by China, India and others.

The initial announcement of the Northern/Interaction-2023 exercise by the two countries’ military leaders came three days after Chinese and Russian military aircraft entered South Korea’s air defense identification zone (Kadiz) without prior notice on June 6.

The Chinese defense ministry claimed at the time that the intrusion was merely part of a “joint aerial strategic patrol” in the East China Sea and East Sea.

China and Russia have held six such combined exercises since 2019.

But a South Korean military official who spoke on condition of anonymity to reporters said that the purpose of Chinese and Russian joint air force exercises, and incursions into the Kadiz, could be “to test the readiness of the Korean Air Force, as well as to collect information on various weapons systems and communication signals.”

BY MICHAEL LEE [lee.junhyuk@joongang.co.kr]