Korean aerial tension reignites as North accuses South of drone intrusions

SEOUL, South Korea — An infuriated Pyongyang accused South Korean President Lee Jae-myung’s forces of flying drones into North Korea.

Saturday’s accusations renew recent memories of cross-border aerial intrusions and retaliations with drones and balloons — and rumored South Korean dirty tricks.

Politically, the condemnations represent a double whammy for Mr. Lee.

Firstly, he has made no secret of his amicable intentions toward North Korea — so far rejected.

Secondly, his administration has tasked investigative bodies with proving that his impeached and imprisoned predecessor ordered drone incursions into the North.

Socially, the claims suggest that anti-North activists in the South may have found a new tool to provoke the government of Mr. Lee and the regime of Kim Jong-un.

Militarily, they point to aerial vulnerabilities — even across one of the world’s prickliest frontiers.

Drones over the DMZ

North Korean state media on Saturday accused the South of deploying two drones north of the DMZ: one on Sept. 27, another on Monday.

Both were reportedly downed by electronic means — soft kills — the media stated, adding that cameras proved the drone’s missions were reconnaissance.

Posted images showed primitive-looking propeller drones, similar to radio-controlled aircraft. They were painted pale blue, likely sky camouflage.

South Korea “should be ready to pay a high price for having committed another provocation infringing on the sovereignty of [North Korea] with a drone,” stormed Pyongyang’s state-run Korean Central News Agency, accusing the South of “hostile” acts.

Mr. Lee said a drone operation would constitute “a serious crime that threatens peace on the Korean Peninsula and national security.” He also ordered police to launch an investigation into who may have launched the aircraft.

South Korean Defense Minister Ahn Gyu-back told South Korean media that the claims were “absolutely not true” and suggested a joint North-South probe.

South Korean military officials added that the drone models shown by the North were not flown by the South.

The Koreas have a recent history of shadowy cross-border aerial campaigns.

In December 2022, Seoul said five North Korean drones crossed the DMZ and loitered over sensitive sites in the South — civilian airports and the combined Ministry of National Defense/Presidential compound.

Attempts to down them failed; the drones withdrew into the North.

Then, in November 2024, North Korea accused South Korea of flying drones over Pyongyang, its capital, and dropping propaganda leaflets. Those drones were shot down by North Korea with kinetic, or hard kill, means.

Mr. Lee’s administration has concurred that those flights happened.

Aerial shadow play

Mr. Lee’s investigators allege that the incursions were crafted by hardcore conservatives to create a hostile inter-Korean climate, justifying an extreme political maneuver in the South.

On Dec. 12, 2024, President Yoon Suk Yeol, citing obstruction from the National Assembly and “anti-state forces,” declared martial law. It proved a massive blunder.

Furious citizens rallied, while politicians defied special forces and police to force their way into the National Assembly and vote the decree down.

Disgraced, Mr. Yoon was impeached. A June presidential election was won by Mr. Lee.

He has since ordered investigators and prosecutors to try to prove Mr. Yoon’s ill intentions.

As part of their probe, investigators in July entered a joint South Korea-U.S. air base at Osan to collect radar and related data, seeking to show Mr. Yoon ordered the 2024 drone infiltration over Pyongyang.

The Osan raid irked U.S. Forces Korea, which protested to Seoul’s Foreign Ministry. U.S. troops have since taken control of base access.

Meanwhile, experts find it hard to believe the South’s military conducted recent drone flights northward.

“It is not possible,” said Yang Uk, a security specialist at the Asan Institute for Policy Studies, a Seoul think tank. “All military and intelligence agencies are on a tight leash; nobody would dare to do this.”

But an unofficial grouping within South Korea has reasons to provoke Mr. Lee and North Korea.

For decades, South Korean civic activists, some of them North Korean defectors, have floated balloons freighted with radios, media and anti-regime propaganda northward over the DMZ.

Liberal governments in South Korea — including Mr. Lee’s — have deployed legal measures to halt their operations.

The balloon flights also sparked countermeasures from the North, which sent balloons loaded with trash into the South.

Some in South Korea speculate that civilian activists may have been hired and equipped by domestic intelligence agencies to conduct the 2024 drone operations, granting Seoul plausible deniability.

It’s also possible that anti-North activists have eschewed balloons and obtained the cheap, low-tech drones that Pyongyang claims intruded.

“A small drone could be flown from a civilian organization or an individual with some kind of intent,” Mr. Yang said.

The drones portrayed by Northern media “were very crude, not military-grade like those found in Pyongyang,” he added.

Though the North’s statement claimed that Southern border radar facilities must have tracked the drones as they crossed the DMZ, experience in the Russo-Ukraine war suggests otherwise.

Russia boasts some of the world’s most advanced air defenses, but Ukrainian missiles and drones routinely penetrate them — striking arms factories and bomber bases deep inside Russia.

In Korea, the northern and southern perimeters of the 4-kilometer-wide DMZ bristle with defensive positions, sensors and weaponry.

However, The Washington Times knows of a foreign media organization flying a camera-equipped drone over the sensitive frontier.

The drone returned safely. Neither it nor its operator was detected by either side.