Authorities said Thursday that an emergency alert text message warning Cheorwon residents of a drone sighting and ordering evacuation had been triggered by a US military training drone — a clarification that came hours after the alert was sent.
South Korea's military is believed not to have received advance notice from the US side. Public criticism has grown, with many arguing the drone should have been shot down immediately — and that the military should have made its intent to do so clear, given that the object was unidentified at the time.
Earlier Thursday, The Herald Business reported on the incident under the headline "Drone spotted in Cheorwon — authorities withhold details, only issue controls, leaving residents anxious."
Critics say that if the drone had been sent from North Korea and was flying over South Korean airspace — even with GPS spoofing — it should have been downed without delay. Public sentiment is also running high that if the US conducted a drone exercise without notifying the South Korean side, the military had every reason to treat the object as a North Korean drone.
According to residents living north of the civilian control line, text messages were sent to village heads at around 2:30 p.m. Thursday, stating that a drone had been identified in the Cheorwon area and that people should urgently move to a nearby shelter or outside a control post. No detailed explanation was provided, but residents were instructed to evacuate and told the alert was a real-world situation, not a drill.
The Joint Chiefs of Staff confirmed the drone was a US military aircraft. The clarification did not reach the public until near sunset.
A JCS official said an unidentified aerial vehicle had been spotted in the northern Gyeonggi Province area south of the General Outpost line, and that standard operational procedures had been followed. "Upon confirmation, it was identified as a US drone conducting training," the official said.
South Korea's military first detected the drone through surveillance equipment but could not determine whether it belonged to South Korean or North Korean forces.
The confusion appears to have stemmed from the US side failing to properly notify South Korean military authorities of the planned drone training. The JCS said it is investigating the flight path and other details of how the US drone came to be operating in the area.
The public has voiced frustration, arguing that any unidentified flying object capable of harming South Korean citizens should have been shot down as quickly as possible.
Meanwhile, drone-related incidents have more commonly come to public attention in the context of South Korean drones being sent toward North Korea.
Testimony in the insurrection trial of former President Yoon Suk Yeol and others has also included claims that drones were sent into North Korea to provoke a response from Pyongyang.
In a separate case, a graduate student was detained after flying a civilian drone into North Korea without authorization. The student recently applied for bail, but a court rejected the application on July 9.
abc@heraldcorp.com
