North Korea’s Shocking Drone Moves – What You Need to Know

North Korea, which scrapped the 9.19 military agreement last year, has escalated tensions on the Korean Peninsula by firing into the West Sea for three consecutive days from last Friday. On the 8th, our military officially declared the buffer zones that ban hostile acts set up according to the military agreement nullified.

Considering the normative nature of the military agreement, the Yoon Suk Yeol government has essentially recognized the effectiveness of the maritime buffer zone. However, North Korea seems to have urged the agreement to be nullified through consecutive military actions.

Under the 2019 military agreement, North and South Korea established a “hostile act cessation zone.” This agreement halts artillery fire and naval maneuver training in the maritime buffer zone and aerial reconnaissance in the designated no-fly zone.

However, as North Korea’s violations of the agreement continued and even led to military reconnaissance satellite provocations, the Yoon government took measures last year to suspend the effectiveness of the no-fly zone.

While the maritime buffer zone still has validity, North Korea has been firing into the West Sea for three consecutive days since the 2nd. In response to North Korea’s repeated provocations, our military declared the maritime buffer zone meaningless. After just over four years and four months, the military agreement, once praised as a legacy of the Moon Jae In government, has become mere scraps of paper.

Due to North Korea’s continuous violations and provocations, the hostile act cessation zones set up in the sea and air have disappeared. There is a need to prepare for provocations aimed at this.

We must pay close attention to the potential for drone provocations, which wreaked havoc in our society last December. In that instance, we discovered too late that a North Korean drone had breached the airspace around the presidential office in Yongsan, Seoul. This incident underscores the urgent need for our military to be fully prepared and vigilant.

The problem is that detecting, tracking, and shooting down small drones is not easy. During the drone provocation two years ago, our military launched fighter jets, which were even evaluated as “shooting a missile to catch a fly.” In response, our military is focusing on securing overwhelming and offensive responses to North Korean drone provocations.

Defense Minister Shin Won Sik ordered on the day of his visit to the Drone Operations Command, “Through the evolutionary development of drone power in conjunction with ‘Defense Innovation 4.0,’ we will continuously strengthen the ability to reinforce the defense system against enemy drones and carry out overwhelming attack operations on key targets in North Korea in case of emergency.”

General Lee Bo Hyeong of the Army Aviation Command said, “If North Korea threatens the lives and property of our people again with drone provocations, we are ready to conduct offensive operations by deploying a large number and variety of advanced drones into North Korea.”

The new minister said, “The importance of drone power will grow even more in the future,” and added, “Drones are ‘game changers’ on the battlefield and have proven their effectiveness in real combat situations such as the recent Russia-Ukraine war and the Israel-Hamas armed conflict.”

He added, “I hope the Drone Operations Command becomes an elite joint combat unit that gives fear to the enemy and trust to the people.”

In particular, he said, “North Korea is continuously escalating the level of asymmetric threats such as strengthening drone power and intensifying nuclear and missile threats while shifting the responsibility for the deterioration of the situation on the Korean Peninsula to our side in a bold manner. In this serious security situation, our military must be equipped with a strong mental armament of soldiers and a retaliatory posture that can overwhelm the enemy with the principle of ‘immediate, strong, and end (immediately, strongly, and to the end)’ to achieve ‘peace by force.'”

The Ministry of Defense said, “We will gradually expand the Drone Operations Command and quickly power up advanced drones to develop into a joint combat unit that performs high-level strategic and operational tasks.”