In 1950 the Americans designated the Sachon field K-4. English Wikipedia says it was used that year for the Bout One project, which trained South Korean pilots to fly the F-51 Mustang, and that the ROKAF 10th Fighter Wing was formed here in 1951. HistoryNet’s account of Bout One describes a unit that improvised seven bases in its first six months, moving south as the front collapsed and north again after Inchon.

The present airport is younger: Wikipedia gives 1 November 1969 for its construction and 1977 for the start of passenger services, which had been delayed. It remains small, a single-storey domestic terminal with flights to Gimpo and Jeju. Wikipedia gives 219,289 passengers and 1,937 aircraft movements for 2019; the trainers, test aircraft and factory flights on the other side of the field are not in those figures.

The 3rd Flying Training Wing was established at Daegu on 10 May 1968 and re-established at Sacheon in April 1973, according to Korean Wikipedia. It received the T-59 in September 1992, and in September 2000 the KT-1 Woongbi, the Korean-designed turboprop that grew out of the KTX programme launched in 1988. By May 2004 every training squadron had converted.

English Wikipedia lists the 213th to 217th and the 236th Flight Training Squadrons at Sacheon, together with the Air Force Test and Evaluation Wing and its 281st Flight Test Squadron, the Basic Military Training Wing and two logistics schools; the air force’s Education and Training Command has been at nearby Jinju since 1998. In November 2018 the wing recorded 300,000 hours of accident-free flying.

The KT-1 itself had a slow start. Nine prototypes were built, the first completed in June 1991 and flown that November, but deliveries to the air force began only in 2000, two years later than planned, according to English Wikipedia. Eight had been handed over by the end of that year, when KAI was reportedly building two a month. The armed KA-1 version went to the 8th Fighter Wing at Wonju for forward air control.

Korea Aerospace Industries has its headquarters on the north side of the airfield, and the T-50 Golden Eagle is built there. The T-50 first flew on 20 August 2002 and entered service on 22 February 2005; the FA-50 light fighter followed in 2011, and exports have taken it to Poland, where 48 were ordered in 2022.

The KF-21 Boramae made Sacheon famous. The first prototype was unveiled at a rollout ceremony at KAI’s headquarters in April 2021, and on 19 July 2022 it took off from the 3rd Training Wing at 15:40 and landed at 16:13. Six prototypes flew about 1,600 test flights over 42 months without an accident, finishing on 13 January 2026.

The first production aircraft, a two-seater with the serial 26-001, rolled out on 25 March 2026 in front of President Lee Jae Myung, Breaking Defense reported. On 22 September 2026 a production KF-21 with the serial 25-001 flew from Sacheon to Yecheon for the 156th Fighter Squadron, The Aviationist reported; the two reports give different serials, and whether they describe the same aircraft was not confirmed.

Pilot training is where air forces lose young people, and Sacheon has had its losses. On 13 November 2003 a KT-1 crashed shortly after take-off from Sacheon; the instructor ejected, and the student was killed.

The worst came on 1 April 2022, when two KT-1s collided over a mountain north-east of Sacheon and four ROKAF pilots were killed, according to English Wikipedia. It was the deadliest accident in the type’s service, and it came less than four months before the KF-21 made its first flight from the same airfield.