South Korean troops shoot at civilian airliner by mistake

South Korean Marines fired rifles at a South Korean commercial aircraft flying near the sea border with North Korea, thinking it was one of the communist North's jet fighters, but they never hit their target, military sources said on Saturday.

The shooting illustrates the level of tension between the two Koreas, still technically at war after the 1950-53 Korean conflict ended in a truce rather than a peace treaty, which came close to all-out war last year.

A Marine Corps spokesman said two soldiers guarding an island on the waters off the South's western city of Incheon fired their K-2 rifles for about 10 minutes at around 4 a.m. on Friday.

The plane was later identified as an Asiana Airlines Airbus A320 flying from China making its descent into Incheon, Seoul's main airport.

A defense ministry source said the plane, carrying 119 passengers and crew, was undamaged as it was about 500 to 600 meters out of the range of the hand-held K-2 rifles.

Yonhap News Agency and other local media said the soldiers believed the plane was flying north of the normal air corridor. Asiana officials told the news agency the plane never left its scheduled course.

It is much easier to believe the airmen: they are on the radar 100% of the time in such a populated area:

Incheon International Airport (IIA) (IATA: ICN, ICAO: RKSI) (Korean: 인천국제공항) is the largest airport in South Korea, the primary airport serving the Seoul national capital area, and one of the largest and busiest airports in the world

The pilots also have to land at that airport, and the landing requires you to be on course. Besides, selection of the course is entirely up to the pilots, even if it is contrary to earthly laws; certainly the opinion of two drunkards on the ground will not have much weight in the cockpit, where pilots have complete control over lives of 200+ people.

On the other hand, take those soldiers. They couldn't identify the target (because they didn't.) They couldn't reach the target with their weapons. They couldn't determine the course of the target. They had no information why an airplane would be on that course, and they had no reason to believe they would be informed anyway.

The only correct action they could have taken is to report the sighting and let the properly equipped people deal with the situation.

This article doesn't mention the island by name, but CNN says it's Gyodong Island. The Incheon airport is at 37.465639N, 126.450882E, and its runways are oriented nearly N-S (320 degrees.) This means that some landing airplanes have to approach from North, and they do just that every day the moment the airport was built (in 2001.) The distance from the airport to the border is 23 miles, but the approach over water (such as from China) is open.

In other words, the soldiers had to be on drugs.

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