Last month, a near-miss incident in which a U.S. military drone participating in a joint drill near the truce line in Paju, Gyeonggi Province, was nearly intercepted after being mistaken for an unidentified flying object stemmed from a communication error between South Korean and U.S. military working-level officials.
According to the explanation, the U.S. military notified flight plans only via a text message the day before the exercise, but a working-level official belonging to the Army's I Corps failed to report the plan to superiors, triggering the commotion.
Announcing the results of its combat readiness inspection today (August 3), the Joint Chiefs of Staff stated, "We found that the causes were the failure of our military's command-line reporting system to operate, and the failure to comply with the official special-use airspace flight approval procedures due to customary practice."
Previously, on the afternoon of July 30, the South Korean military detected an unidentified flying object flying near the Military Demarcation Line in the frontline area of Paju, Gyeonggi Province, and issued "Durumi," an anti-air operation alert, prompting simultaneous air defense interception preparations and search operations.
However, the flying object was a "Stalker" reconnaissance drone belonging to the U.S. Marine Corps participating in the South Korea-U.S. Marine Corps joint exercise.
According to the investigation, the U.S. side notified the working-level official of the Army's I Corps of the drone flight plan via a mobile phone text message on July 29, the day before the drill.
The I Corps working-level official reportedly told the U.S. side that there were "no restrictions" and did not report or disseminate the fact to superiors or higher units.
It is known that the official judged the matter notified by the U.S. side to be within the discretion of the I Corps, assuming it was a drone flight below a certain altitude.
However, the U.S. drone flew higher than expected, which led the South Korean military authorities to identify it as an "unidentified flying object" and activate the air defense operation posture, according to the findings.
While the primary issue was that the South Korean working-level official omitted reporting despite being notified of the drone flight plan, it was also pointed out as a problem that the U.S. military substituted official documents and approval processes required for special-use airspace flight with text messages between working-level officials the day before the exercise, as had been done customarily.
The military stated that it will improve the cooperative airspace control operation system between South Korea and the U.S. moving forward.
(Produced by SBS Digital News | Reported by Kim Taewon | Video Editing by Hong Jin-young | Design by Lee Jung-ju)
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