{"id":135161,"date":"2026-08-28T07:03:32","date_gmt":"2026-08-28T07:03:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/135161\/"},"modified":"2026-08-28T07:03:32","modified_gmt":"2026-08-28T07:03:32","slug":"ex-drone-commander-working-day-labor-at-coupang-inc-warehouse-let-me-keep-my-honor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/135161\/","title":{"rendered":"Ex-drone commander working day labor at Coupang Inc warehouse: ‘Let me keep my honor’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Former Former Drone Operations Command commander Kim Yong-dae [Newsis] <\/p>\n

Kim Yong-dae, the former commander of the Drone Operations Command who was removed from office and indicted by the insurrection special prosecutor over allegations of unauthorized drone incursions into Pyongyang, is currently working as a day laborer sorting packages at a Coupang Inc logistics center to make ends meet.<\/p>\n

According to Andong MBC, Kim made the disclosure at his appeal hearing at the Seoul High Court on Aug. 14, saying he had “served with the sole conviction of protecting the peaceful daily lives of the people against North Korean provocations,” but had “lost all honor as a general officer and is now getting through each day doing casual labor at a Coupang logistics center.” He urged the court to “hand down a wise ruling so that a soldier who devoted his entire life to his country can shed an indelible burden and preserve his final shred of honor.”<\/p>\n

Kim also said he “carried out operations on orders from higher command, driven solely by a soldier’s innate sense of duty to protect the public’s safety amid six months of North Korea’s trash-balloon provocations.” He added that he “cannot suppress a sense of devastation at the reality that all the administrative measures he took \u2014 decisions made in accordance with military principles for the security and success of the operation \u2014 have been found guilty.”<\/p>\n

\"This This photo is unrelated to the article. [Newsis] <\/p>\n

Kim also challenged the basis of the charges against him, arguing that “if disposing of spent smoke canisters that had lost their military utility is treated as a crime, the military arrives at the contradiction of having to leave unnecessary waste inside units indefinitely.” He added that units routinely fabricate improvised gun mounts not listed in official inventories and discard them at a commander’s discretion, asking whether “all of that must also be punished as destruction of military property.”<\/p>\n

Kim further said that “around June 2024, while communicating with the Presidential Security Service chief, I mentioned a combat experiment involving drone stealth technology, which the special prosecutor deemed a leak of military secrets.” He said combat experiments involving the Navy’s Aegis ship humanoid robot helmsman, an AI-based mine-warfare unmanned system, and even the specifications of a 730-ton vessel had been disclosed in the press and were not treated as classified.<\/p>\n

Kim, a graduate of the 48th class of the Korea Military Academy, previously served as deputy chief of operations plans at the Second Operations Command and as head of the helicopter project division at the Defense Acquisition Program Administration (DAPA) before becoming the second commander of the Drone Operations Command with the rank of major general. He was removed from office over allegations of unauthorized drone incursions into Pyongyang, obstruction of official duties by deception, and falsification of official documents.<\/p>\n

He is currently indicted without detention on charges including inducing the falsification of official documents and leaking military secrets. In June, a trial court sentenced him to three years in prison, suspended for five years, and his appeal is now before the First Criminal Division of the Seoul High Court.<\/p>\n

husn7@heraldcorp.com<\/p>\n

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former Drone Operations Command commander Kim Yong-dae [Newsis] Kim Yong-dae, the former commander of the Drone Operations Command…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":135162,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[381],"tags":[426],"class_list":["post-135161","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-coupang","tag-coupang"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135161","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=135161"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135161\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/135162"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=135161"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=135161"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=135161"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}