N Korea drone entered S Korea’s presidential no-fly zone: Army - Al Jazeera English

The drone was among 5 North Korean unmanned aerial vehicles that crossed into South Korea’s airspace connected December 26.

A North Korean drone entered the bluish extremity of a 3.7km (2.2 miles) radius no-fly portion astir South Korea’s statesmanlike bureau successful Seoul erstwhile it intruded into the country’s airspace past month, South Korean subject officials say.

“It [the drone] concisely flew into the bluish borderline of the zone, but it did not travel adjacent to cardinal information facilities,” a subject authoritative told South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency connected Thursday.

The drone was among 5 North Korean unmanned aerial vehicles that crossed the borderline and entered South Korean airspace connected December 26, prompting South Korea’s subject to scramble combatant jets and onslaught helicopters. The subject could not bring down the drones, which flew implicit South Korean territory for hours.

South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff had denied that 1 of the drones intruded into the statesmanlike bureau no-fly zone, however, connected Thursday confirmed that a drone had violated the bluish extremity of the unafraid country but did not alert straight implicit the Yongsan area, wherever the bureau of President Yoon Suk-yeol is located.

The drone incursion has sparked disapproval of South Korea’s aerial defences astatine a clip erstwhile North Korea poses a increasing threat arsenic it develops its ballistic rocket technologies, including test-launching an unprecedented fig of missiles past year.

“Drone incursions person laid bare the South’s insufficient readiness to detect, way and sprout down specified tiny drones,” Yonhap said.

South Korea’s president warned connected Wednesday that helium would see suspending a 2018 inter-Korean subject pact with Pyongyang if drones interruption his country’s airspace again.

“He instructed the nationalist information bureau to see suspending the validity of the subject statement if North Korea stages different provocation invading our territory,” statesmanlike property caput Kim Eun-hye told a briefing.

The 2018 deal, sealed connected the sidelines of a acme betwixt North Korean person Kim Jong Un and erstwhile South Korean President Moon Jae-in, called for ceasing “all hostile acts”, creating a no-fly portion astir the border, and removing landmines and defender posts wrong the heavy fortified Demilitarized Zone (DMZ).

Yoon’s menace to wantonness the 2018 pact could mean the instrumentality of live-fire drills successful the erstwhile no-fly portion and propaganda broadcasts crossed the borderline – each of which drew aggravated responses from Pyongyang earlier the pact. Yoon has criticised the military’s handling of the drone incident, and has urged the country’s forces to basal acceptable to retaliate, adjacent if that means “risking escalation”.

He has besides ordered the defence curate to motorboat a broad drone portion that performs multipurpose missions, including surveillance, reconnaissance and physics warfare, and besides called for a strategy to mass-produce stealth drones.

South Korea’s service has operated 2 drone squadrons wrong its Ground Operations Command since 2018, but they were chiefly designed to hole for aboriginal warfare.

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