The U.S. Is Pulling South Korea Into Its Rivalry With China

This incident is part of a broader pattern of Chinese gray-zone pressure—military activity calibrated to coerce without crossing the threshold of armed conflict—along South Korea’s air and maritime boundaries, following the playbook that China has run against the Philippines in the South China Sea, against Japan near the Senkaku Islands, and against Australia after Chinese warships conducted live-fire exercises in the Tasman Sea. But while those campaigns drew headlines, Beijing’s pressure on Seoul largely has not. Newly consolidated data from South Korea’s Ministry of National Defense, drawn from National Assembly disclosures and reproduced across multiple domestic sources, shows a sharp…