dropping an "external" table without deleting the data

[Igor Tatarinov]

I keep making the same mistake of creating an external table without saying
"EXTERNAL". As a result, as you can imagine, I am stuck with a table that I
cannot drop or I'll lose the external (S3) data. I end up terminating my
EMR instance and creating a new one to avoid dropping the table
accidentally.

Is there a way to drop a "should-be-external" table without losing the
data? Thru mysql perhaps?

Thanks!
igor