North Korea’s Kim holds security meeting over drone flights

State media said on Tuesday that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un called a high-level national security conference with the goal of directing “immediate military action” in response to a disagreement with South Korea regarding drone flights.

With Pyongyang instructing troops on its border to be ready to strike, the nuclear-armed North has accused Seoul of using drones to drop anti-regime propaganda leaflets over its city. On Monday, South Korea declared that it was “fully ready” to respond.

The military in Seoul first refuted North Korea’s assertion but thereafter said it was unsure if it had launched drones across the border.

Last weekend the North said Seoul would face a “horrible disaster” if drones from the South reached Pyongyang again.

Monday’s meeting in the North was attended by the country’s top officials, including the army head and other military chiefs, as well as the ministers of state security and defence.

“He set forth the direction of immediate military action and indicated important tasks to be fulfilled in the operation of the war deterrent and the exercise of the right to self-defence”, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported Tuesday.

Reports on the “enemy’s serious provocation” were presented to Pyongyang summit officials, according to KCNA, which seemed to be a reference to the drone flights.

According to official media, Kim “expressed a tough political and military stand” during the meeting.

The North declared on Sunday that it would regard the detection of another drone as “a declaration of war” and accused Seoul of being the source of drones that dropped propaganda leaflets containing “inflammatory rumours and rubbish”.

Local conjecture in the South has focused on national activist groups that have long sent US cash and anti-Kim propaganda northward via balloon.

However, local media reported that drone enthusiasts in South Korea had previously sent homemade drones across the border, with larger battery-powered devices being within range of Pyongyang.

According to enthusiasts who spoke to local media, the devices they used were built of expandable polypropylene, which is comparable to Styrofoam and unlike ordinary drones made of metal. This allowed them to evade detection by both North and South Korean authorities.