South Korea opened fire on drones from North Korea
2022.12.26 06:07
South Korea opened fire on drones from North Korea
By Ray Johnson
Budrigannews.com – According to the South Korean military, five North Korean drones entered South Korea on Monday, and South Korea attempted to shoot down the North Korean aircraft by scrambling jets and attack helicopters.
According to a South Korean military official, the South Korean military also sent surveillance aircraft into the North to photograph its military installations as part of its response.
Lee Seung-o, a South Korean official with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, stated at a briefing, “This is a clear act of provocation by the North violating our airspace.”
Lee stated that the South Korean military “operated assets to shoot down” one of the five North Korean drones that flew close to Seoul, the capital of South Korea. The other drones flew close to the west coast.
He didn’t say if any drones had been shot down, but the Yonhap news agency later said that the South Korean military fired about one hundred shots but didn’t kill any of them. Lee said South Korea at first discharged “advance notice shots” when it previously identified the robots.
According to Yonhap, which cited the Joint Chiefs of Staff, one of the drones was known to have returned to North Korea, while South Korea lost track of the other four.
North Korea’s state media made no mention of drones and has no channel for South Korean media inquiries.
Lee stated that South Korean reconnaissance aircraft entered the North to take pictures of the North Korean drone flights in action, implying that the North Korean drones were also intended for reconnaissance.
The military reported earlier that South Korea detected the drones in the skies of the western city of Gimpo around 10:25 a.m. (0125 GMT) and tracked them as they crossed the so-called Military Demarcation Line between the two countries.
Since 2017, when a North Korean drone believed to be on a spy mission crashed and was found on a mountain near the border, the drones are the first to be confirmed to have come from the isolated neighbor.
On a South Korean border island in 2014, a North Korean drone was found.
Those cameras-equipped drones were regarded as primitive aircraft.
On Monday, Lee stated that the North Korean drones were small—about two meters—but he did not provide any additional information regarding their equipment, if any.
North Korea and South Korea, a U.S. ally, have had poor relations for decades, but tensions have recently increased as a new, conservative South Korean government took office and North Korea continues its nuclear and missile programs.
In response to a record number of North Korean missile tests this year, military exercises have been intensified by South Korean and American forces. Exercises of this kind are seen by North Korea as preparations for an invasion.
Those have been met by additional North Korean tests and drills, including rare sorties by warplanes near the border.
A request from the military led to the suspension of flights from the Incheon and Gimpo airports, according to the transport ministry of South Korea.
A ministry official told Reuters that the suspension began at 1:08 p.m. (0408 GMT) at Gimpo and ended at 1:22 p.m. (0408 GMT) at Incheon. It lasted about an hour before flight departures resumed around 2:10 p.m.
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According to a representative of the defense ministry, a South Korean KA-1 light attack aircraft crashed shortly after taking off from its base at Wonju, which is located in the east of the country. The pilots were scrambling to combat the drones. Before the crash, its two pilots were able to escape and are currently in the hospital.
