ROK Government and Local Citizen Group Reach Agreement on Future of U.S. Army Apache Live Fire Drills at Rodriguez Range
The issues around Rodriguez Range is very similar to noise complaints by people who build homes around airports. The range had been there long before the population began increasing around the area. It looks like the ROK government will now invest enough money in the area to keep the locals quiet for the time being:
U.S. troops may now employ attack helicopters in live-fire drills at a range 16 miles from North Korea, according to the South’s Ministry of National Defense. For the past six years, the Army could fly AH-64 Apaches in exercises at the Rodriguez Live Fire Complex, but not fire their weapons. Representatives from the ministry, South Korean army and a citizens’ group investigating noise complaints from the range, signed a memorandum Monday to “normalize” training by U.S. forces, according to a ministry news release that day.
Concerns over noise generated by the Apaches prompted a U.S. noise study earlier this year, Kang Tae Il, chairman of the citizens’ group — Pocheon Live Fire Range Countermeasure Committee — told Stars and Stripes by phone Tuesday. “We, local residents, originally wanted to get this range moved and closed,” he said. “However, in the situation in our country that is a standoff with North Korea, soldiers need to train somewhere.”
The change near the border came as tensions continue to tick higher on the peninsula. On Tuesday, North Korea destroyed parts of inter-Korean roads on its side of the border, after claiming that South Korean drones flew over Pyongyang. To compensate Pocheon residents for the noise, the ministry agreed to construct a gymnasium, golf course and other sports facilities around the range at an undetermined date, Kang said.
You can read more at the link.
Korea is rapidly becoming Germany where, due to noise restrictions, we could barely maintain NVG currency, never mind proficiency, in the summer months due to a midnight curfew on flight operations and late sunsets. Had a new neighbor, a physician, move in off the active and he spent all his free time complaining about noise. Interesting to think about what would have happened to him in 39-45 when the Flugplatz was a Ju-87 training base. Koreans might want to think how their complaints would be addressed if the NKPA had succeeded in 1950 and adjust accordingly, Attack helicopters have been firing there for generations now.
All this will fix itself in a few months once the US Republicans come to power. Then bye bye you folks, because South Korea is not going to pay your country $10 billion a year to keep you folksl in the country. lol.
Korean man, I suppose you were thinking this back in November 2016, and it still didn’t happen, did it?