No, This Is Not a Video of Indian Army Personnel Demonstrating Combat Skills

The video shows the 69th Armed Forces Day celebrations in South Korea, from 2017.

The video dates back to 2017 and shows the South Korean armed forces.

(Source: Facebook/Screenshot)

A video showing people dressed in military attire, displaying hand-to-hand combat skills, is doing the rounds on social media. The clip, which shows people with painted faces sparring with one another, is being shared to claim that it shows Indian Army personnel.

However, we found that the video shows South Korean armed forces displaying their combat skills during the country's 69th Armed Forces Day celebration in 2017.

CLAIM

The video is being shared to claim that it shows Indian Army personnel.

An archive of this post can be seen here.

(Source: Facebook/Screenshot)

Archives of similar posts can be seen here and here.

WHAT WE FOUND

Using InVID, a video verification tool on Google Chrome, we divided the viral video into multiple keyframes and ran reverse image searches on some of them.

One search on Yandex led us to a clear still of the video, which carried text and a logo.

The image carried text which translates to '69th anniversary Armed Forces Day Celebration.'

(Source: Yandex/Altered by The Quint)

We scanned the text on the top left-hand side using Google Lens, which identified the language as Korean and translated it to – '69th anniversary Armed Forces Day Celebration.'

Taking a cue from this, we looked for videos of the event and came across the full video of the event dated 28 September 2017, on South Korean news portal Arirang News' verified YouTube channel.

Here, we saw that visuals matching the viral video began an hour and 38 minutes into the event's video.

(Note: Swipe right to view all three images.)

A masked person spars with another in a red jacket in both videos.

One person fights with another pointing a gun at their back in both clips.

The same person is seen standing in a combat pose in both videos.

We saw that the viral clip did not use a continuous portion of the video, but stitched together different sections of the combat routine displayed during the celebrations.

The country celebrates its Armed Forces Day on 1 October each year, to commemorate the day of its forces breaking through the border, against North Korean invasion, during the 1950 Korean War, as per Al Jazeera.

However, it was celebrated earlier in 2017 as the lunar harvest festival fell on 1 October that year, the report said.

You can watch the full video of South Korea's 69th armed forces day celebration, that took place in 2017 here.

Evidently, the video does not show Indian Army personnel. It shows South Korean armed forces displaying their skills during the 69th armed forces day celebrations.

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