Abstract
Here, the significance of China’s controversial and somewhat overlooked Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) declaration in November 2013 is examined in general and then specific to the Socotra Rock dispute. The move incorporated the airspace over the submerged feature and included identification rules that aircraft entering the unilaterally declared zone would have to obey. The new ADIZ overlapped with both South Korea’s and Japan’s own respective ADIZs. This spurred South Korea to conduct military activities, some of them including Japan, aimed at publicly rejecting the new ADIZ while also instructing airlines to ignore it. One leading scholar opined at the time that the situation could become ‘extremely dangerous’ if the PRC ever decided to intercept non-complying aircraft. On the domestic front in South Korea, a key consequence was that the declaration caused many people to better comprehend and appreciate the strategic importance of the area in which Socotra Rock is located.
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Notes
- 1.
For an interesting article concerning criticism of South Korea’s apparent quiet diplomacy and bilateral requests as well as their overall strategy, see Cha, 2013.
- 2.
This article also discussed how Japan was irritated by China’s exploitation of issues such as Socotra Rock to enhance China’s influence in South Korea at the expense of Japan (such as meeting President Park separately on 31 October 2015); see Korea Herald, 05/11/2015.
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Fox, S. (2019). Balancing Act: China’s Air Defense Declaration. In: China, South Korea, and the Socotra Rock Dispute. Palgrave Pivot, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-2077-4_5
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