North Korea released photos of the drone, which some analysts verified was South Korean, and declared on Saturday that it had found the wreckage of at least one downed South Korean military drone in Pyongyang.
Recently, Seoul was accused by the nuclear-armed North of using drones to dump anti-regime propaganda pamphlets on the nation’s capital.
A spokesman for Pyongyang’s defence ministry said that during a search of the North Korean capital on October 13, security officials discovered the wreckage of a downed drone, according to the official KCNA news agency.
The spokesman, who remained anonymous, claimed that the North’s probe “scientifically proved that the drone came from the ROK,” abbreviating South Korea.
South Korea’s military initially denied sending drones, but has subsequently declined to comment.
“There is no value in verifying or responding to North Korea’s unilateral claims,” it said in a brief statement Saturday.
In the past, North Korea has threatened to view the detection of another drone as “a declaration of war”.
The North Korean official asserted that the drone was to the same class as a drone that was mounted on a truck and openly shown off by the South Korean military on October 1st, 2018, at an Armed Forces Day celebration in Seoul.
KCNA published a number of photos of what it said was the recovered drone, some of which included North Koreans who looked to be authorities and others which showed the drone wedged in a tree.
Senior analyst Hong Min of the Korea Institute for National Unification stated that the drone was “clearly a long-range reconnaissance small drone used by… the South Korean military” based on the photographs given by the North.
“It is the same model that our military showcased during the Armed Forces Day event last year,” he told AFP.
