After the failed Hyunmoo missile launch, covered by the author in a previous article, was almost misrepresented by armchair journalists as a North Korean shelling, the author was asked to provide more details.
In response to the North Korean launches, the ROK and US militaries fired four (each side two) ATACMS, surface-to-surface missiles. In addition, the ballistic missile Hyunmoo-2s was launched, but there was an abnormal situation: it changed its trajectory and flew in the opposite direction. As a result, the missile’s warhead fell about a kilometer from the firing range in Gangneung, and the part with the missile fuel about 400 meters away. The accident caused several explosions and a fire that greatly frightened the residents of Gangneung. Since the leadership was not on site at the time, confusion over the official explanation for the accident continued throughout the night.
So far, the military has reported that there were no casualties (the warhead did not explode due to the safety device), but there is a residential building about 700 meters south of where the warhead was found, so the failed launch could have resulted in human casualties.
On October 6, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Kim Seung-kyum publicly apologized for the problems associated with the failed launch. A defect in the control system was cited as the reason for the failure.
The embarrassing setback couldn’t help but trigger an intra-party “this is what Yoon/Moon has brought the country to” controversy! According to the Democrats, the incident showed the failure of the military under the Yoon Suk-yeol administration: it turns out there are reports that the military prevented firefighters sent to the scene from putting out the fire, and generally there should be a thorough investigation into the incident, including who devised the operation plan, what decisions the government security service made and what details were reported to the president. Conservatives, on the other hand, recalled that under the inter-Korean military agreement signed under Moon, the Moon government had closed the Goseong test site where such a ballistic missile was to be launched. And in view of the shirking of exercises with real combat training, the level of combat readiness has naturally fallen.
The right-wing conservative newspaper JoongAng Ilbo noted that after the news went viral, the military and fire service did not send any warning or information to locals, causing fake news about eight missing persons etc to spread quickly on the web. Only two days later, the population was told what had happened.
This, however, was not the end of the trouble. Soon, the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) of the ROK said it was unclear whether one of the four ATACMS missiles had hit its intended target, as communication with the tracking device on it had been lost during flight. Then, it emerged that the aircraft raised on October 8 in response to a major air maneuver by the DPRK Air Force were only equipped with training air gun munitions – the live ammunition is still missing and no firing has taken place since March 2019. Of course, modern aerial combat is mostly at missile range rather than projectile range, but it is still embarrassing.
Finally, according to a report submitted in October 2022 by People Power Party National Assembly Member Shin Won-sik, in the 18-month period up to June this year, F-35A fighters were stopped before departure or forced to land in 172 cases, and in 62 cases the aircraft could fly but could not perform certain missions.
According to the same report, nine Type 214 submarines were found to have serious defects in their inverter module cables or in the modules themselves, manufactured by Germany’s Siemens. This is a key part involved in the rotation of the propellers.
To make matters worse, the exact cause of the defects remains unknown, and the repair process for each submarine, including the time required to transport the modules to Germany, will take six months. This could have a negative impact on the readiness of the submarine fleet in the coming years.
It should be noted that in October 2019 and January 2021 a faulty inverter module was already the cause of problems and on January 23, 2021 a submarine, which had an error message in the propulsion system, had to be towed by a civilian vessel.
In this context, it is worth recalling other failures of recent years. In May 2020, the ROK Navy discovered an engine problem in four newly upgraded high-speed patrol boats deployed to guard the maritime border with North Korea.
In July 2020, the government inspected the quality of the transmission developed for South Korea’s K2 main battle tank after the system failed tests.
In November 2020, anti-tank guided missile system was fired at a firing range in Gyeonggi Province in the presence of foreign visitors to the defense exhibition. However, when the missile was fired at the target it flew sideways for 300m and fell in a farmer’s field, 20-50m short of the houses. There were no casualties or destruction, but the media sneeringly quoted the Hyeongung complex’s advertising brochures, which spoke of “the highest accuracy of firing”.
On June 8, 2021, the ROK Ministry of Defense decided to temporarily suspend all flights of KF-16 fighters after an emergency situation occurred with one of them. The incident happened to an aircraft of the 20th Fighter Aviation Regiment when its engine caught fire while preparing for take-off. The pilot was forced to leave the aircraft in an emergency. It was later discovered that a bird caught in the air intake was the cause of the KF-16 fighter’s engine fire.
In July 2021, all flights of the Surion family of helicopters were temporarily suspended after an emergency landing incident (5 people were injured).
On April 1, 2022, three KT-1 training aircraft collided during a training exercise, killing four people. On April 27, 2022, after an investigation, the incident was attributed to a series of human errors, including malfunctions in the pilot’s communications.
To summarize, the frequency of failed launches or technical problems is not high enough to sound the alarm. That is not to say that no one is immune from mishaps: but while the North’s failed launches, in the opinion of armchair pundits, “demonstrate the inadequacy of the missile program,” no such tone applies to similar problems in the South. In reality though, there are problems with military readiness and they should be taken into account when calculating the military capabilities of countries, remembering that “even the best shotgun has a chance of misfiring.”
Konstantin Asmolov, PhD in History, leading research fellow at the Center for Korean Studies of the Institute of China and Modern Asia, the Russian Academy of Sciences, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.”
