The Yellow Sea is a shallow marginal sea of the western Pacific between mainland China and the Korean Peninsula, covering about 380,000 square kilometers with an average depth of 44 meters. Its inner arms are the Bohai Sea and Korea Bay, and a line from west of Jeju Island to the Yangtze estuary divides it from the East China Sea, of which it is sometimes treated as the northwestern part. Koreans call it the West Sea. Its coasts belong to China, North Korea and South Korea, whose two militaries set up "peace zones" near their maritime demarcation line in 2018, and it lies within the area of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command.

The sea's UAP record comes from the Department of War's 2026 PURSUE releases. Release 02 on May 22 included DOW-UAP-PR057a, a 70-second clip its uploader titled "Spherical UAP in clouds." The All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) assessed that it likely came from an infrared sensor aboard a U.S. military platform over the Yellow Sea in January 2023; in it an area of contrast repeatedly enters the frame and fades against the background as the sensor pans and zooms. AARO noted that PR057b is the same footage under another uploader's title placing it over the East China Sea on January 5, 2023, and cautioned that many records gathered for a March 2026 House request "lack a substantiated chain-of-custody."

Release 04 on July 10 added two Indo-Pacific Command files titled "Unresolved UAP Report, Yellow Sea." PR100 is nearly five minutes of 2023 footage in which the sensor switches from infrared to a daytime television camera that shows a dark object against a blue background. PR104, 18 seconds from 2025, tracks an area of contrast "resembling a six-pointed star," the image Fox News highlighted in its coverage. Release 06 on September 18 added five more 2023 infrared clips, PR143, PR144, PR150, PR151 and PR152, running from 19 seconds to 1 minute 38 seconds. AARO says its descriptions should not be read as "an analytical judgment, investigative conclusion, or factual determination."

At least eight distinct videos from three tranches are tied to the Yellow Sea, seven of them from 2023. They record what sensors on U.S. military platforms captured over a sea bordered by China and both Koreas, but the published descriptions give no platform, range, altitude or speed, no agency has offered an explanation for any of them, and the Indo-Pacific Command reports remain filed as unresolved.