South Korea accuses Japan of 'clear provocation' after Tokyo allegedly flies plane close to warship

South Korea has accused Japan of “clear provocation”, claiming a Japanese patrol plane made a “threatening” low-altitude flight over a South Korean warship on Wednesday.

Seoul’s joint chiefs of staff said the plane flew somewhere between 196ft and 229 ft above the water near a naval ship in seas southwest of the Korean peninsula.

The announcement follows a spat between the two countries’ militaries over Japanese allegations that a South Korean warship locked its fire-control radar on a Japanese patrol plane in December last year.

South Korea’s military denied the allegation and accused the plane of flying low over the warship, which was engaged in rescuing a North Korean fishing boat.

Suh Wook, a spokesman for the joint chiefs, said the latest detected flight was the third time Japanese planes have flown low over South Korean warships since the December incident.

It is considered highly unlikely that such encounters will lead to actual skirmishes, but the tone over the military dispute has grown increasingly hostile.

“The threatening low-altitude flight conducted today, despite our firm request to the Japanese government to ensure that [such flights] don’t recur, is a clear provocation against the naval vessel of a friendly country and makes it impossible for us not to question Japan’s intentions,” Mr Suh said in a statement.

“If such activity repeats again, our military will respond strongly based on our response rules.”

Japan’s chief cabinet secretary Yoshihide Suga responded by stating that it was “essential that the Japanese and South Korean defence authorities try to communicate and promote better understanding”.

Seoul and Tokyo are key US allies and close economic partners, but disputes remain over both current military issues and wartime history.

Relations have sunk to their lowest level in recent years over compensation issues related to the Japanese army’s sexual abuse of “comfort women” and forced labour by Koreans during Japan’s colonial rule of the Korean peninsula between 1910 and 1945.

The two countries’ foreign ministers were due to have met on Wednesday on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

Additional reporting by agencies