SOUTH KOREAN fighter jets fired more than 300 warning shots at a Russian military aircraft yesterday after it twice violated the country’s airspace, defense officials said.

In a statement, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said that a Russian A-50 command and control military aircraft twice violated South Korean airspace off the country’s eastern coast yesterday morning.

The South Korean military said they flew above islands claimed by both South Korea and Japan, first at 9:09 a.m. local time and then again at 9:33 a.m., each time for just a matter of minutes. The two, small disputed islands are known to the Koreans as Dokdo and to the Japanese as Takeshima. They’re situated about halfway between both countries.

In response, South Korea deployed F-15F and KF-16 fighter jets, the statement said, and fired 360 warning shots ahead of the Russian aircraft, 80 during the first violation and 280 during the second. The shots were fired using a 20mm weapon, according to the Ministry of Defense.

The South Korean military said they also sent out 30 warnings to the Russian plane but received no response. It is the first time a foreign country has violated South Korean airspace, according to the ministry.

Chung Eui-yong, director of South Korea’s National Security Office, said that he had sent a “strong” message of complaint to the Russian authorities over the incident.

“We are taking this situation very seriously, and if this kind of action is repeated, we will take even stronger measures,” Chung said, without detailing what those measures could be.

Carl Schuster, a former director of operations at the United States’ Pacific Command’s Joint Intelligence Center, said that shooting a warning shot in the air was “very very serious” and “very, very rare.”

Schuster said that the fact shots were fired meant Seoul had viewed the violation as a serious and deliberate act, adding he couldn’t explain why the Russian plane would come back again after the first warning.

“Penetrating to a point of requiring warning shots to turn away is normally the result of a deliberate decision to penetrate that airspace,” he said.

Top Russian and South Korean leaders met at the G20 in Osaka, Japan, in June, where they praised their warming bilateral relations. Russian President Vladimir Putin said South Korea was “one of our key partners” in Asia.

It is the second tense incident involving the Russian military in East Asia in less than two months. On June 8, two vessels from the U.S. and Russia almost collided in the Pacific, coming within 17 meters of each other.

The exact location of the standoff wasn’t clear but it was believed to have taken place in the waters off the coast of China.(SD-Agencies)