By RIA Novosti
Moscow : Two pilots safely ejected as a South Korean military plane crashed on Monday during a routine patrol flight near the border with North Korea, the Xinhua news agency reported.
The agency said citing the South Korean military that an RF-4C fighter crashed early Monday in mountainous Gangwon Province, 25 minutes after taking off from an airbase south of Seoul.
The military said there were no reports of casualties on the ground and a team of investigators had been dispatched to the scene to determine the cause of the accident.
North Korea has routinely reported the alleged spy flights by U.S. and South Korean military aircraft near and over its territory.
In January, the official Korean Central News Agency, quoting a military source, said combined U.S. and South Korean espionage flights totaled over 2,500 last year.
North and South Korea remain technically at war after the 1950-1953 Korean conflict ended in an armistice.
Currently, some 28,000 U.S. troops are deployed in South Korea to support the South’s 680,000 against any threat from North Korea with its 1.1-million armed forces.