‘Friendly Fire’ Incident Involving Two Korean Fighter Planes Engaging in War Games With the Americans Injures 15

SEOUL — In wartime, it would have been “friendly fire.” In peacetime, the bombing of civilians by two Korean fighter planes Thursday went down as a “training accident” in which 15 people, five of them Korean soldiers, were injured, two seriously.As the Korean air force described it, two KF-16s — a single-seat Korean variant of the American F-16 — were flying about 15 miles southeast of the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea when the pilot of the lead plane lobbed several 500-pound bombs onto a civilian neighborhood rather than onto the intended mock target. The pilot of the second plane, assuming the first pilot knew what he was doing, dropped a few more, bringing the total to eight.The “friendly fire” incident, the first involving a Korean plane since the end of the Korean War nearly 72 years ago, was an embarrassment for both the Koreans and the Americans as they ran their biggest joint war games of the year. A Korean air force officer said the pilot of the lead plane before taking off had punched in where he was supposed to drop the first bomb but had failed to follow standard procedure and verify his information while in flight.The mayor, Baek Younjg-hyun, of the town where the bombs fell, Pocheon, said the scene was “absolute chaos and reminds us of a battleground.” He called for the exercises to stop until authorities adopt “firm measures and compensation” along with “measures to convince the people.”That no one was killed and only two were seriously injured — one a 60-year-old man with shrapnel in the neck, the other with a fractured shoulder — came as a relief to the American and Korean commands, anxious to go through with the war games involving thousands of Americans and South Koreans in the air, at sea, and on the ground.“A tragic mistake, but if we do not train, we will make more tragic mistakes,” a retired American Army colonel, David Maxwell, with the Center for Asia-Pacific Strategy in Washington, said. He added that “the worst thing to do is to halt training … we cannot allow this tragic accident to erode our readiness.” That outlook permeates the Combined Forces Command, in which Korean and American officers coordinate defenses against North Korea. An American four-star general commands U.S. Forces Korea, including America’s 28,500 troops in the country, as well as the CFC, but Koreans within the CFC have been playing an increasingly larger role in recent years. American and Koreans, from policymakers to commanders, are waging what many see as a battle against time before President Trump looks at Korean defenses as far too expensive and thinks of scaling back the American investment while seeking talks and reconciliation with the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un. Sensing that Mr. Trump may want to spoil the fun, American and Korean officers were adamant about the durability of the Korean-American alliance. The spokesman for the U.S. Forces Korea command, Colonel Ryan Donald, declared, “The ironclad commitment” to South Korea “is strong as ever.” In that spirit, America’s most advanced fighter plane, the F-35, along with the American and Korean versions of the F-15 and Korean T-50 trainers, have been in the air high over the training area while the aircraft carrier Carl Vinson and other vessels in its strike group, now at the port of Pusan in southeastern Korea, engage in exercises with Korean and possibly Japanese planes. The Korean spokesman, Colonel Lee Sang-jun, confirmed the Freedom Shield exercises will feature what to do in case of martial law — a reminder that Korea’s impeached president, Yoon Suk-yeol, remains in prison facing the charge of “insurrection” for his abortive coup in December. The constitutional court is expected to rule in a week or two whether to approve or dismiss the impeachment decree voted by the assembly.Colonel Lee made clear, though, that any military training for martial law would only include the military role, nothing political. No denying, though, the eagerness with which the Americans and Koreans are conducting the exercises reflects that Korea’s hawkish president, a strong advocate of joint military exercises, may be fully out of his job — and still in jail — if the court upholds his impeachment.

‘Friendly Fire’ Incident Involving Two Korean Fighter Planes Engaging in War Games With the Americans Injures 15

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