South Korean officials cut costs when they put a concrete wall at the end of a runway and then obfuscated safety risks, a government report released on Tuesday said, decisions that may have contributed to the deadliest aviation disaster in the country.
Operators of the Muan International Airport, in the southwestern part of the country, did not want to do costly ground leveling of the site and build the barrier with collapsible materials, according to the report from South Korea’s Board of Audit and Inspection. Officials then submitted false inspection reports for 16 years before the disaster threw scrutiny on the airport.
The decisions, which violated international safety guidelines, led to a catastrophic outcome when a Boeing 737-800 made an emergency landing at the airport in December 2024. The plane skidded past the runway and slammed into the concrete structure before bursting into flames. All but two of the 181 passengers and crew onboard died.
It did not have to be that way. Everyone aboard Jeju Air Flight 2216 could have survived the crash had the wall been built with materials that broke apart easily, according to a computer simulation commissioned by the government and released earlier this year.
A New York Times investigation last year found a series of design and construction failures that led to the construction of the concrete wall close to the runway. The Times also found that authorities in South Korea had ignored a stark warning about safety risks.
According to the audit report, a consortium of companies that operated the airport initially planned to build a collapsible structure to house crucial navigation antennas, called localizers, close to the runway. But by the time the airport opened for service in 2007, they had built an unyielding concrete wall in order to raise the height of the localizers, which have to be higher than the highest point on the runway.
That was because it would have been too costly to level the sloping ground next to the airport’s runway, the state auditor said in its 300-page report.
The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport knew that the wall failed to meet international safety recommendations, which call for “runway end safety areas” where only breakable structures should be built, the report said. But between 2008 and 2024, its officials falsified documents to claim the wall was made of frangible materials, the report added.
In 2013, the ministry chose to shrink the runway end safety area around the Muan airport’s sole runway, instead of removing the concrete wall.
The transportation ministry said on Tuesday that it would “accept the results” of the report. The Korea Airport Corporation, a state-owned company that now manages most commercial airports in the country, including Muan’s, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In total, the board found 14 localizer structures at nine airports across the country has been built without adhering to government regulations. The South Korean government has said it is working to replace concrete berms.
Jin Yu Young is a reporter and researcher for The Times, based in Seoul, covering South Korea and international breaking news.
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