South Korea has reportedly fired warning shots after Russian military planes violated the nation’s airspace on Tuesday, according to South Korea’s Defense Ministry.
The Associated Press reported that, according to South Korea’s Defense Ministry, “multiple Russian military planes violated the South Korean airspace off its east coast” and “Chinese military planes also intruded into South Korea’s aerial identification zone.”
South Korea reportedly scrambled fighter jets that fired the warning shots.
The provocation comes after “two Russian military aircraft violated South Korea’s air defense identification zone [last Thursday], prompting the Air Force to scramble fighter jets in response,” the Korea Herald reported.
The incident comes as North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un “inspected a large newly built submarine, state news agency KCNA reported on Tuesday, potentially signalling continued development of a submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) program,” Reuters reported.
“The operational capacity of a submarine is an important component in national defence of our country bounded on its east and west by sea,” Kim reportedly said.
“We can clearly see that it is a massive submarine — much larger than the existing one that’s been well known since 2014,” said Ankit Panda, a senior fellow at the U.S.-based Federation of American Scientists. “What I find significant about the political messaging here is that this is the first time since a February 2018 military parade that he has inspected a military system clearly designed to carry and deliver nuclear weapons. I take that as an ominous signal that we should be taking Kim Jong Un’s end-of-year deadline for the implementation of a change in U.S. policy with the utmost seriousness.”
President Donald Trump has shown a willingness to work with Kim as he recently became the first president in U.S. history to step into North Korea.
“Stepping across that line was a great honor,” Trump said.