South Korea's military lost track of 11 firearms in five years, lawmaker's data show

South Korea's armed forces lost track of 11 firearms over the past five years through loss, leakage or theft, according to data the army, navy and air force submitted to the office of Yu Yong-won, a People Power Party lawmaker, as reported by the Segye Ilbo on Sunday, Oct. 18. The newspaper's headline said seven of the weapons are still missing, while the body of its report put the number never recovered at six.

The army accounts for most of the cases. According to the report, its missing weapons are two K2 rifles, one K5 pistol, one M203 grenade launcher, one M16A1 rifle and two .45-calibre pistols. The most recent case came on Sept. 9, when a K2 rifle disappeared at an army division after the number of rifles issued during reservist training did not match the number handed back to the unit.

That September loss had already drawn attention at the time. Maeil Business Newspaper reported on Sept. 11 that a K2 rifle had gone missing at a reserve forces training ground in Goyang, north of Seoul, and that military authorities had opened an investigation.

The navy lost three .45-calibre pistols in February 2022 through careless management, and none has been recovered, the Segye Ilbo reported. In the air force, a member of the 33rd Air Defence Control Group took a K2 rifle and 15 rounds of ammunition out of his unit in August 2022 and took his own life. In March last year, a K5 pistol was used in an attempted act of self-harm at an army command, the report added.

The data also cover grenades and armoury keys. The Marine Corps recorded two thefts, in 2022 and 2023, in which non-commissioned officers stole practice grenades and were each suspended for three months. Two officers and a non-commissioned officer were disciplined over poor handling of armoury keys. In one navy case in the first half of this year, an officer was suspended for a month for skipping the handover procedure for the keys to a weapons and ammunition store. Last year, a non-commissioned officer who pocketed live rounds after firing practice without reporting or returning them was caught at security screening at Gimhae airport.

The figures follow a fatal shooting this summer that exposed similar gaps. In August, a Marine staff sergeant was found dead from a gunshot wound in off-base quarters in Pohang. Maeil Shinmun reported on Aug. 13 that interim findings by the 1st Marine Division showed the sergeant had been his unit's weapons and ammunition section chief and had carried a K1 rifle and 10 training rounds off the base between July 29 and July 31. He had taken two rifles from the armoury to replace their stocks, returned only one and left with the other in a bag, and the unit failed to notice the loss for at least three days because daily weapon counts were not carried out properly.

The same findings showed that the sergeant entered the armoury and ammunition store without the officer in charge, breaking a rule that two responsible personnel must enter together, and kept the keys in his office drawer instead of the command and control room. The Marine Corps ordered a special inspection of firearms and ammunition across all units and began an inspector-general audit of the division on Aug. 9.

Yu said the loss of weapons that the military should guard most strictly was itself a problem, but that the failure to recover them after several years was even more worrying, because their criminal misuse could not be ruled out. He urged the authorities to make every effort to locate the missing guns and said the cases involving ammunition and grenades showed the need to review the military's whole system for managing its supplies.