North Korea has announced the completion of its analysis regarding a drone that reportedly crashed near Pyongyang earlier this month, which it claims dropped propaganda critical of the Kim Jong Un regime. The North Korean defense ministry released a statement on Sunday detailing the final results of its investigation into what it alleges was a violation of its sovereignty by a drone launched from South Korea.
According to the English-language report from the state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), the investigation, which included the country’s secret police and various government agencies, conducted a “comprehensive” examination of the drone’s flight control module, uncovering a total of 238 flight plans and logs.
This drone, which North Korea claims was dispatched by South Korean defense forces, allegedly took off on October 8 at 11:25 PM from Paekryong Island, a heavily fortified South Korean position near the maritime border. The North Korean military stated that the unmanned aerial vehicle penetrated its airspace near Jangyon County in South Hwanghae Province and Cho Islet, before heading inland towards Pyongyang, where it reportedly scattered anti-North propaganda.
South Korea’s military has previously refrained from commenting on the veracity of North Korea’s claims. At a press conference on Monday, Joint Chiefs of Staff spokesperson Lee Sung-joon stated that these allegations were “not worth responding to.”
KCNA included a map in its report, purporting to show the drone’s flight path, which allegedly traversed areas near both foreign and defense ministry buildings as well as the Pyongyang Metro’s Sungri Station.
The North Korean defense ministry’s statement asserted, “The confirmed objective and scientific evidence data expose that the intrusion by the drone is aimed at scattering the anti-DPRK (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea) political motivational rubbish and that the principal of the hostile infringement upon DPRK sovereignty is none other than the puppet ROK (Republic of Korea) military gangsters.”
The ministry noted that it had already issued a “last warning” to South Korea over its “reckless, political and military provocation.”
This announcement follows reports earlier in October of drone overflights. On October 12, North Korea’s defense ministry had ordered its forces to be “fully ready to open fire” due to alleged South Korean drone flights, although the South’s military later clarified that it had not deployed drones across the border.
North-South tensions are currently at their highest in decades, exacerbated by North Korea’s frequent missile tests, the breakdown of a 2018 agreement aimed at reducing tensions along the Demilitarized Zone, and the numerous trash-bearing balloons the North has launched toward the South since May. Pyongyang claims these balloon launches are retaliatory measures against activists who have sent balloons containing South Korean pop culture, which is strictly banned in the communist nation.
