THE EUROPEAN – SECURITY AND DEFENCE UNION
The Yellow Sea in an era of growing Chinese ambitions and South Korea
by Dr Eunsook Chung, Senior Research Fellow and Director of the Department of Security Strategy Studies, The Sejong Institute, South Korea
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ccording to the US Department of Defense’s annual China Military Power Report released on 3rd November 2021, China has the biggest maritime force on the globe with an inventory of about 355 vessels. The report describes China’s navy as having growing ambitions to operate with more versatile platforms beyond the Indo-Pacific region. As a matter of fact, in July 2013, during a Chinese Communist Party session, President Xi Jinping delivered a speech on building China into a maritime great power by the middle of the 21st century. Like the South and East China Seas, the Yellow Sea has also seen progression of China’s military activities since the 2010s. The following could be some indications of it.
South Korea) is located 80 nautical miles southwest of South Korea’s Mara Island and 155 nautical miles from China’s Sheshan Island. South Korea found the reef in 1984 and built a scientific research station on it (1995-2003). China objected to South Korea’s construction and asserted that the Socotra Rock area belonged to its Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). The first Chinese buoy near the Socotra Rock was discovered in 2014. Secondly, the People’s Liberation Army forces conducted mil-
Dr Eunsook Chung is a Senior Research Fellow and Director of the Department of Security Strategy Studies at the Sejoing Institute in Seoul. She is a graduate of Korea University and obtained her Ph.D in
Political and military pressure from China Firstly, in 2013, China announced the 124th meridian east as the line of its naval area of operation in the Yellow Sea, unilaterally claiming that South Korea’s naval ships should not operate west of the line. Yet, the incidence of the Chinese naval ships crossing the line to the east has been increasing. China’s naval activities in the southern part of the Yellow Sea have been a particular concern for South Korea due to the maritime dispute in the region. The Socotra Rock (“Ieodo” in
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photo: © 2014 Anton Balazh/Shutterstock
China has a wide range of options to escalate tensions over the Yellow Sea issues
photo: private
Political Science from Ohio State University. Dr Chung has been a visiting
fellow at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs, the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, the Austrian Institute for International Affairs, and the Peace Research Institute in Frankfurt. She served on the board of directors at the Academic Council of the United Nations System (AUCUNS) from 2015 to 2018.
