South Korean Busan police said on Thursday (June 26) that two Chinese citizens were arrested for illegally using drones to film, their targets were the South Korean naval base and the US aircraft carrier USS Roosevelt docked at Busan port.
According to Agence France-Presse, the two men are Chinese students in Busan and were arrested on Wednesday for damaging South Korean military interests, violating the Military Base and Facility Protection Act. The police said that this is the first time foreigners have been detained on such charges.
An official from the Busan police told AFP, “Two Chinese people were arrested yesterday for illegally filming the naval base and a US aircraft carrier.” He added that, “Currently, a third Chinese person is under investigation but not yet arrested.”
The South Korean authorities believe that among the detained suspects, one is in his forties and the other in his thirties. They used drones and mobile phones to illegally film the South Korean Fleet Command Headquarters located in Busan, which is responsible for overseeing the operations and training of the South Korean Navy.
These two Chinese individuals are also accused of illegally filming the USS Theodore Roosevelt, a US aircraft carrier participating in joint operations docked at Busan, and conducted unauthorized surveillance nine times between March 2023 and June 2024.
According to the Busan police, the most recent activity of the Chinese individuals was on June 25, 2024, when South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol visited the aircraft carrier and met with representatives of the South Korean and US military.
The information obtained through surveillance includes 172 photos and 22 video files, some of which have been shared on social media platforms like TikTok without authorization.
The suspects used a drone manufactured by a Chinese company, as stated by the Busan police. The drone model requires users to register through the company’s application before use, during which all photos and data taken during surveillance are transferred to servers located in China.
Last month, due to the illegal transfer of personal data of South Korean users to China and other countries by Temu, a subsidiary of the Chinese e-commerce giant Pinduoduo, South Korea imposed a fine of nearly $1 million on Temu.
This case is not the first involving Chinese students being accused of filming South Korean military facilities. In April this year, two Chinese high school students were arrested for filming military aircraft near the 10th Fighter Wing in Gyeonggi Province, one of them claiming his father is a Chinese (Communist Party) police officer, raising doubts about his identity. Investigation authorities found that in addition to military aircraft, they also filmed multiple military facilities and airports.
In the past year, South Korea has discovered several instances of Chinese individuals filming important domestic facilities or stealing intelligence, including three Chinese students filming the US aircraft carrier in Busan Port in June last year; a Chinese individual using a drone to film the South Korean National Intelligence Service in November of the same year; a Chinese tourist found using a drone to film Jeju International Airport in January this year; and on May 29, a Chinese individual disguised as a soldier attempting to seduce South Korean active-duty military personnel to leak military secrets.