South and North violated armistice with December drone flights

Defense

Published: 26 Jan. 2023, 16:04 Updated: 26 Jan. 2023, 18:29

South and North violated armistice with December drone flights

Joo Il-seok, the Joint Chiefs of Staff director of defense readiness condition, shows a map displaying the location of anti-aircraft radar systems surrounding Seoul to lawmakers on the National Assembly’s Defense Committee in Yeouido, western Seoul on Thursday. [YONHAP]

The United Nations Command (UNC) announced Thursday that both Koreas violated the Korean War armistice by sending drones into each other’s territory last month.

The UNC, which is responsible for maintaining the armistice that ended hostilities in the 1950-53 Korean War, formed a special investigation team (SIT) to probe the incursion of five North Korean drones into South Korean airspace on Dec. 26, as well as the South’s deployment of its own drones across the inter-Korean border that same day.

“The SIT was able to determine that the Korean People’s Army side committed a violation of the armistice when multiple North-side unmanned aerial systems (UAS) entered ROK-controlled airspace,” the UNC said in a press release, referring to South Korea by the acronym of its official name, the Republic of Korea.

The UNC investigation said the South also violated the armistice agreement by sending unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) across the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) dividing the two Koreas.

The UNC said mutual adherence to the terms of the armistice is “essential” to minimize the risks of both accidental and deliberate military escalation, as well as the preservation of peace on the Korean Peninsula.

The South Korean government has defended its own drone operation as an exercise of its right to “self-defense” that is not proscribed by the armistice in response to domestic political criticism.

Seoul’s Defense Ministry said earlier it respects the UNC’s authority to uphold the armistice and that it is “actively cooperating” with the command’s investigation.

Officials from Seoul’s Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) reported to the National Assembly’s Defense Committee on Thursday that although a North Korean drone that flew into central Seoul may have been equipped with a camera, it could not have accurately photographed the Yongsan area in Seoul, where the presidential office is located.

The JCS reached its conclusion after a month-long internal probe of its readiness against North Korean drone operations, where it found failures in operational capabilities, reporting procedures, manpower management and training programs.

In their report to the National Assembly, JCS officials said that the South Korean military perceived small North Korean UAVs as a much lesser threat than Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons and missiles, and that the South Korean anti-drone defensive system is currently incapable of simultaneously detecting and targeting small drones that fly as quickly as the ones sent over the border by the North last month.

But the JCS also stressed that the intelligence benefits reaped by the North through its latest drone incursion were likely to have been marginal at best, given the technical limitations of the photographic equipment mounted on past North Korean drones.

According to the JCS, the military believes that one of the North Korean drones that managed to slip past South Korean defenses into central Seoul was likely equipped with a commercial camera.

The JCS also said that the lens of the camera on the drone was likely fixed in a vertical, downward-facing direction, limiting the scope of its surveillance operation.

“Considering the flight altitude and the capabilities of commercial cameras installed on past North Korean drones, we believe that filming in the Yongsan area was limited,” the JCS said.

Previous North Korean drones that infiltrated the South were equipped with cameras such as the Canon EOS 550D, which was discovered alongside drone wreckage in Paju, northern Gyeonggi on March 24, 2014; a Nikon D800, which fell with a drone on Baengnyeong Island on March 31, 2014; and a Sony A7R, which was discovered alongside a fallen drone in Inje, Gangwon on June 9, 2017.

The JCS said the North Korea drone incursion was likely “aimed at testing our military's ability to respond, foment confusion in our society, and incite our military to inflict damages on civilians in its attempts to intercept the drones.”

BY MICHAEL LEE [lee.junhyuk@joongang.co.kr]