A military funeral will be held for the four Republic of Korea Navy service members who lost their lives in the recent patrol aircraft crash in Pohang, North Gyeongsang Province.
On May 30, the Navy convened a Line of Duty Death Review Committee in the morning and concluded that all four victims died in the line of duty. The Navy also recommended posthumous promotions to the Ministry of National Defense. Later that day, at 1 p.m., the Navy formally decided to conduct a military funeral for the four fallen crew members and established a joint memorial altar at the gymnasium (Geumikgwan) of the Naval Air Command in Nam-gu, Pohang.
The funeral service will be held at 8 a.m. on June 1 at the Naval Air Command auditorium and will be officiated by the Chief of Naval Operations. The remains will be interred at the Daejeon National Cemetery later the same day at 4 p.m.
The crash occurred at 1:49 p.m. on May 29, when a Navy P-3CK anti-submarine patrol aircraft went down in a forested hill area in Nam-gu, Pohang, during takeoff and landing training designed to enhance pilot proficiency. All four personnel aboard, including lead pilot Maj. Park Jin-woo (33), were killed in the accident.
Maj. Park had served in Pohang for approximately five years and had over 1,700 hours of flight experience, making him a highly seasoned pilot. Co-pilot Capt. Lee Tae-hoon (29) had logged more than 900 flight hours. Sgt. Yoon Dong-gyu (26) and Sgt. Kang Shin-won (24) were assigned to monitor flight instruments and perform safety checks, respectively, and were executing their duties at the time of the crash.
The aircraft took off from Pohang Air Base at 1:43 p.m. After completing its first round of training, it crashed approximately six minutes later while turning right during the second maneuver, for reasons that remain unknown. The Navy has launched a full investigation into the cause of the crash, forming an accident response task force led by the Vice Chief of Naval Operations.
Meanwhile, as the recovery operations settled on the afternoon of May 30, some of the bereaved family members visited the crash site.
Among them, a middle-aged woman collapsed roughly 20 meters from the police cordon. She sobbed uncontrollably, crying out, “What do I do now? How do I go on?” Her accompanying family members quietly supported her without speaking. Though she eventually stood, she could not stop crying, and the atmosphere at the site was filled with silence and grief.
About 30 minutes earlier, another group of grieving relatives had also arrived. A man gently told the woman beside him, “Let’s be strong,” but she lowered her reddened eyes without replying. The pair is presumed to be the parents of one of the deceased. They stayed at the scene for about 20 minutes, unable to bring themselves to leave easily, before slowly walking away.
A Navy official stated, “We are operating a family support team to ensure all funeral procedures and honors are conducted with the utmost respect,” adding, “We will also thoroughly investigate the cause of the accident.”
Photo=Yonhap News
