April 21, 2025
SEOUL – South Korea’s military has come under fire for lax discipline following a series of major accidents in recent months, including the latest involving the Air Force’s accidental dropping of two gun pods from a KA-1 light attack aircraft during training on Friday.
The series of incidents came amid a leadership vacuum in the military that began in December, prompting security concerns due to signs of a weakened defense posture. Former Defense Minister Kim Yong-hyun and several other key unit commanders were arrested and have been detained for their alleged roles in ex-President Yoon Suk Yeol’s botched martial law declaration on Dec. 3. Vice Defense Minister Kim Seon-ho is currently serving as the acting defense minister.
“On the surface, (the series of accidents) may seem to be merely a lack of discipline within the military, but it’s more an accumulation of inadequate military training,” said Yang Uk, a research fellow in military strategy and weapons systems at the Asan Institute of Policy Studies, speaking via phone on Sunday.
“It’s the result of inconsistency in military training, with the liberal Moon Jae-in administration having halted and scaled back several key drills and then the Yoon administration failing to revive the momentum of the exercises,” he said.
What the South Korean military desperately needs at the moment is consistency in its training, in Yang’s view.
According to the Air Force on Friday, a KA-1 light attack aircraft jettisoned two gun pods and two empty fuel tanks during a night training exercise held over Pyeongchang, approximately 125 kilometers east of Seoul. No casualties or property damage have been reported as the components landed in a mountainous area, the Air Force said.
The Air Force announced the following day that it had found and retrieved the two gun pods by mobilizing one HH-60 helicopter and 270 troops. But it failed to find the two empty fuel tanks on Saturday and said that the search mission would continue on Sunday.
Friday’s accident came a month after an Israeli-made Heron — a large uncrewed aerial reconnaissance vehicle — crashed into a Surion utility helicopter that was parked in an airfield at an Army base in Yangju, Gyeonggi Province, on March 18. The crash ignited a fire, and both the helicopter and the UAV were destroyed. There were no casualties or injuries, but the Army is believed to have incurred a financial loss of at least 23 billion won ($16.1 million).
After launching an internal investigation into the matter, the South Korean Army on April 9 blamed the incident on “a sudden gust of strong wind.” The wind pushed the UAV, which was attempting to land on the runway, toward the helicopter, the Army explained.
Two weeks prior to the crash, two South Korean KF-16 fighter jets accidentally bombed a village near the inter-Korean border, injuring 38 people, mostly civilians. The South Korean Air Force cited pilot error for the accident. Since then, the two pilots and two Air Force unit commanders have been booked by Defense Ministry investigators on charges of professional negligence resulting in injury.