SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea has put its border artillery units on standby after angrily claiming that South Korea has conducted drone operations in the night skies over its capital, Pyongyang.
The regime of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un went public Friday with complaints that drones had dropped leaflets onto the city three times this month. Photos released by state media appeared to show a flying wing-style drone and stacks of apparent propaganda leaflets.
Over the weekend, one of North Korea’s most senior figures warned that the South faced “a horrible disaster” if it did not desist. On Monday, North Korea announced that it had ordered eight border artillery brigades to be placed on heightened alert.
Pyongyang also appeared to be preparing explosives to demolish road and rail links crossing the Demilitarized Zone. Although the move is purely symbolic because the border crossings are entirely closed, analysts said it constituted another sign that the Kim regime had dropped all pretense of diplomacy and was further fortifying itself against its southern neighbor.
“We will take a strong corresponding retaliatory action … in case drones carrying anti-[North Korea] political motivation rubbish from [South Korea] across the border infiltrate into the territorial sky of [North Korea],” Kim Yo-jong, Mr. Kim’s influential sister, told North Korea’s state-controlled press.
North Korea’s harsh complaints have raised speculation over whether Seoul has initiated a deniable information operation against its hostile neighbor. In August, South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol announced a strategy of granting North Korean citizens, trapped for decades behind steep walls of censorship, access to outside information.
Some say the reported drone incursions could be the first probe. Seoul’s opaque statements have infuriated the North and raised eyebrows in the South.
Deniability
One defense analyst said on background that South Korean drones crossing the border likely had official sanctions. Drones capable of reaching Pyongyang from the DMZ would not be legal for civilians, he said.
Drones fall under the international Missile Technology Control Regime, to which South Korea is a signatory.
“The MTCR means that countries that manufacture and maintain these technologies have strict controls over how they can be used,” said the source, who is familiar with the global defense industry. “Could a civilian store sell drones that can fly [100 miles]? I doubt it. In most countries, you need a by-your-leave from authorities.”
Pyongyang is about 100 miles from the heavily armed DMZ, which separates the two Koreas on the peninsula.
Yang Uk, a security expert at Seoul’s Asan Institute, said it was not certain that the Yoon government was involved in the drone flights.
“North Korea has been infiltrating drones — civilian drones from Chinese companies — since 2014,” he said. “These technologies are all over the civilian and commercial sectors.”
The conservative Chosun Daily newspaper suggested another possibility: The drones could have launched from a vessel in the Yellow Sea, a shorter route that would have evaded border air defenses.
Pyongyang is 26 miles inland. To evade North Korean naval patrols, any vessel must operate well offshore.
Mr. Kim may be indignant because South Korea is playing games North Korea long ago mastered: drone intrusions and operations expressly designed to give the government deniability over its role.
Defense Minister Kim Yong-hyun first denied the South’s military had deployed drones over the DMZ. Subsequently, the Joint Chiefs said they could neither confirm nor deny the North’s claims.
In Pyongyang, however, Ms. Kim was scathing.
“Such an attitude of neither denying or admitting the case proves that the military admitted by itself that it is the chief criminal or accomplice of the current incident,” she said.
A press statement from Seoul’s Defense Ministry said Pyongyang was using a “typical trick” to promote “South-South conflict” — a reference to ideological divisions.
The Hankyoreh, a liberal Seoul newspaper, editorialized that the incident “could lead to further controversy [in North Korea], as it could even lead to speculations that the military failed to detect or assisted the deployment of drones by a South Korean civilian group, so the government needs to explain itself.”
The South Korean Unification Ministry accused Pyongyang of hyping the incident to restore its position at home.
“North Korea has repeatedly fabricated and exaggerated external crises to consolidate its vulnerable regime and control its people,” the ministry spokesman said. “This sudden drone incident appears to have a similar purpose.”
Pyongyang may be concerned that Seoul is targeting a regime soft spot: information control.
Officials who have briefed Seoul correspondents on Mr. Yoon’s information dispersal strategy have declined to say what tactics might be used. The Hankyoreh, citing an unidentified defense official, reported that Seoul was “deliberately ambiguous.”
Moon Chung-in, an academic who advised the previous Seoul administrations that engaged Pyongyang, speculated that Seoul’s “psychological warfare units” were responsible.
Defense experts said the situation remained murky.
Mr. Yang said the alleged leaflets in North Korean media looked unsophisticated and their container was not ideal for airborne dispersion.
“This is totally new,” he said. “I cannot see the MO of the military, intelligence or the balloon guys, so if it is a deniable operation, it is quite a success.”
Christopher Green, a Korea specialist with the International Crisis Group, said lines between private and official anti-Pyongyang activities have blurred.
“The armed forces-versus-activists dichotomy is not at all black and white in South Korea,” he said. “These activities are all characterized by an interplay of state and civil actors.”
Civic activities that infuriate the North — cross-DMZ balloon flights, the erection of Christmas trees close to the border, northward radio broadcasts — require official sign-off, he said.
If Seoul is behind the drone flights, they carry a “high risk-reward profile,” Mr. Green said, because they are “directly targeted at regime security.”
Korean cloud confrontations
Neither the North nor South Korean air defenses have shown any indication that they can halt drone or even balloon intrusions. While drones are proving deadly and destructive in Ukraine and the Middle East, the peninsula’s aerial competition is at a lower intensity.
In 2022, three North Korean drones crossed the DMZ and loitered over sensitive Seoul sites, including the presidential and Defense Ministry compound and two international airports. Efforts to down them failed, embarrassing the South’s military.
For decades, South Korean rights activists have been floating balloons carrying anti-regime messaging and media across the DMZ.
This year, the North began a novel retaliation campaign: unleashing balloons loaded with trash southward. They have resulted in no deaths but have caused physical damage and delays at airports.
Seoul boasts dense air defenses, including camouflaged Patriot missiles on hillsides and chain guns on high-rise roofs, but cannot fire during peacetime. Falling debris would likely cause casualties in one of the world’s most densely populated spaces.
The Greater Seoul area, 30 miles south of the DMZ, houses half of South Korea’s 51 million people.
Seoul sounded no alarm despite Monday’s rumbles. Some residents say other feet are ready to hit the brakes if their government accelerates tensions.
“The news says tensions are rising, but markets are up and foreigners are net buyers,” said Ahn Hae-kyun, a Seoul-based trader. “We all know that a decision for war is down to the Americans.”
• Andrew Salmon can be reached at asalmon@washingtontimes.com.
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