The zone has raised tensions, particularly with Japan and South Korea, and is likely to dominate the agenda of a visit to Asia this week of U.S. Vice President Joe Biden. China published coordinates for an East China Sea Air Defense Identification Zone over the weekend and warned it would take "defensive emergency measures" against aircraft that failed to identify themselves properly in the airspace. The area, about two-thirds the size of the United Kingdom, covers most of the East China Sea and the skies over a group of uninhabited islands at the center of a bitter territorial dispute between Beijing and Tokyo. "It's unsettling to hear the airlines are not filing flight plans, but I understand the Japanese government telling them not to," said Hiroko Niizuma, 36, at Tokyo's Haneda airport before boarding a flight operated by ANA Holdings to Taiwan, where she works as a language teacher. "Launching missiles at this time shows clearly that North Korea has become a new menace for Japan," said Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, before saying he will head to a meeting of the Japanese National Security Council later today. However, he also insisted that the United States had not advised its airlines to comply with Chinese demands for prior notice before their planes enter the new air defense zone. "I believe the U.S. government is taking the same stance as the Japanese government," he said in an interview with public broadcaster NHK. Japan's government says it counted four missiles landing in the Sea of Japan, the body of water between Korea and Japan. Underlining concern in Seoul over China's move, a defense spokesman said officials were reviewing the country's existing air defense zone, but there was no set plan on whether or not to expand it. It already overlaps with China's new zone in a block 20 km by 115 km, the spokesman said.
According to the Japanese Government, three of them came down in Japan's Exclusive Economic Zone.