"Nothing Special": How one Korean woman who dreamt of flying became one of the ROKAF's first female academy graduates and pilots... And why she says it's no big deal

  • Published
  • By Tech. Sgt. Thomas J. Doscher
  • 7th Air Force Public Affairs
OSAN AIR BASE, Republic of Korea --  Republic of Korea Air Force Maj. Lim, Su-Young can't help but stand out just a little bit where ever she goes. As the 7th Air Force commander's ROKAF aide, she is the only ROK officer working on the U.S. 7th Air Force command staff. But her story as a stand-out goes back much further than that and is already a part of the ROKAF's organizational history.

And there's a part of her that wishes it wasn't.

Lim is a graduate of the 49th class of the ROK Air Force Academy, the class of 2001. The Academy graduates about 150 ROKAF officers every year. For the first time, 18 of those graduates were women. Of those 18, seven were selected to be pilots. Among them was Lim.

She said it all started with a dream to fly and a visit to her high school by a ROKAF Academy recruiter.

"I wanted to be a pilot," she said. "The best way to do that was to be a military officer. One day a senior cadet came to our high school and advertised the Air Force Academy. I was very interested, so I entered."

The decision was controversial, not for the country or the ROKAF, but for Lim's family. Her parents, she said, were split on the decision.

"My mother didn't want me to go," she said. "She knew it would be very hard on me, but my father let me make the decision so I could go my own way. He wanted me to be a pioneer."

Lim spent her last years in high school preparing for qualification tests to make herself competitive. The Academy required physicals, an interview, a paper, an entrance exam and all her scores and grades from high school. After passing the examination with high scores, she was accepted into the 49th class.

The easy part was over.

Lim entered the Academy with 19 other women and found that the word was out. The Air Force Academy was the first of Korea's military academies to admit women, and that generated lots of media attention. Despite the cadets' desire to simply fit in and be part of the team, they instead found themselves in the undesirable position of making history every time they did something new.

"Our class was opened too many times to the media," Lim said. "Our life was opened to them. We didn't like that. We just wanted to be the same as the male cadets. I don't like being thought of as one of the first female cadets. We like to just be from the 49th class."

The media attention made what was to be an already difficult time integrating into a new group even harder, Lim said. The media attention caused some resentment among the other cadets. In an organization where teamwork is so important, friction between teammates can be disastrous.

"We were all on the same team," Lim said. "But the media, the cameras, they disturbed the team atmosphere. Everything was new for us. We had to form new relationships, and there were conflicts with the male cadets. Sometimes we fought. But today we serve together as one team, ROKAF. We're friends."

After four years, Lim graduated and took the placement exam that would determine what job she would have in the ROKAF. Lim was accepted into pilot training.

"I was really happy," she said. "This was my dream; why I entered the Academy. I had waited four years to be a pilot."

The two-year training program was not easy, Lim said. Upon completion she was assigned to fly the O-2 observation plane. A few years later, after the O-2 was phased out, she was reassigned to the KA-1 attack aircraft, flying out of K-16 Air Base near Seoul.

After nine years in flying units, Lim went to staff work, assigned to the Seoul Air Show Planning Office as well as working at the G-20 as a translator for the Brazilian presidential security team. Afterward, she was assigned to the Air Force Operations Command where she was selected to be the Korean aide to the U.S. 7th Air Force commander, Lt. Gen. Jan-Marc Jouas.

"In ROKAF, there are no female colonels," Lim said. "We have some lieutenant colonels, but they are in the medical field. So this was the first opportunity for me to see the female colonels and how they lead. I could learn how they work with other male staff members and leadership. They are very strong and smart, and you can see that in how they deal with issues."

Lim said the most impressive aspect of how female U.S. officers work with their male counterparts is how they're treated.

"They're all the same," she said as if sharing a great revelation. "They are on the same team. They're nothing special, and that is best."

It wasn't always that way. Women couldn't enter the U.S. Air Force Academy until 1976, and it was only in 1991, a scant ten years before Lim was commissioned, that then Maj. Martha McSally first flew combat missions in an A-10 over Iraq and Kuwait.

The respect Lim has for her U.S. counterparts is not a one-way street, and she has caught the attention of senior 7th AF women who see a little of their history in her story. Col. Monica Midgette, the 7th AF's senior intelligence officer, is particularly passionate when it comes to women in the military. She said she sees Lim as more than a trailblazer, but a role model for others to follow, much like McSally.

"In the U.S. military women have earned equal pay for a long time now, but it's only been since the early 90's that women were allowed in fighter aircraft. Major Lim is a shining example of how quickly a great idea catches on," Midgette said.

Lim said that it is her hope for women in the ROKAF that, like in the U.S. military, the idea of a woman being a senior military leader becomes "nothing special."

"Just nothing special," she said. "Just one team, and I hope we can all just contribute to that one airpower team."

While Lim may see herself as nothing special, the U.S. personnel she works with disagree, among them the man who chose her as his aide, General Jouas.

"I chose Major Lim for this position because she's a trailblazer," Jouas said. "She's not afraid to forge ahead and do something that's never been done. She's an outstanding officer. Any junior officer in the ROKAF or even the U.S. Air Force could gain a lot by following her example, and I hope they do."

Lim said she has no plans to leave the ROKAF anytime soon.

"If the ROKAF wants me, I would stay here forever," she said.

Midgette said she hopes Lim as well as the other female members of the 49th class choose to stay and serve as an example of what women can do as part of an airpower team.

"In the end, we all want someone we can look up to, someone who looks like us and who we can relate to," Midgette said. "Whether that's a female, Hispanic, Jewish, or poor person made successful, it's the ability to see our own success and hope for a better future that makes change happen. I'd say I learn from Major Lim as much as she learns from me."

For now, however, the most important people Lim sets an example for are her daughters, five-year-old Han Gyeol and one-year-old Han Bi. As her own mother did with her, Lim said she didn't want to see her daughters join the ROKAF, but like her father, she did want them to be pioneers in their own right.

"I want them to see the wider world," Lim said. "And go their own way."