This makes me wonder how many drones have successfully completed their reconnaissance missions over South Korea?:
THAAD site on former South Korean golf course outside of Seongju.
A North Korean drone found last week by a South Korean civilian had spied on the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (Thaad) antimissile site in Seongju County, North Gyeongsang, before crashing into a mountain in Inje, Gangwon, on its way back to the North, according to local military officials.
The drone had traveled at least 270 kilometers (168 miles), the distance between the demilitarized zone and Seongju, to reach the Thaad field.
The South Korean military had not known about the flight until an Inje resident retrieved the drone from a mountain last Thursday at 11 a.m. and reported it to authorities the following day.
“Around 10 photos were found in the Japan-made Sony camera attached to the drone,” said a South Korean military official Monday, who embargoed the story until Tuesday. The photos of Thaad, he said, were among “several hundred,” which mostly featured mountains and civilian areas.
Local officials had to restore the camera because it was initialized, or formatted, by the time they got it. Further analysis was underway.
The South Korean military said the drone had started taking photos from the north side of Seongju all the way down to the south, then continued as it flew back towards North Korea. [Joong Ang Ilbo]
You can read more at the link, but these drones are so cheap to make it seems like the Kim regime can just keep sending them over the DMZ until they are successful at capturing the imagery they want. It looks like the US military needs to consider getting one of these systems to counter North Korea’s drones.
The place is equidistant from Chuncheon (about 40 miles from Seoul) & Sokcho on the coast. Several NK drones crashed nearby in the past. pic.twitter.com/uFCG1pnWEx
It looks like the North Koreans have flown another drone over the DMZ:
South Korean troops fired warning shots at an “unidentified object” flying across the heavily fortified border from North Korea Tuesday afternoon, the South’s military announced.
The military detected the object traversing the Military Demarcation Line (MDL) southward in the Chorwon area in the eastern province of Gangwon at around 4 p.m., according to the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS).
It added the South’s military fired warning shots along with dispatching a warning broadcast.
A defense source said the military fired more than 90 K-3 machine gun rounds, adding it may have been a drone.
The South’s military is analyzing the object and its route and has beefed up its air defense posture, said the JCS. [Yonhap]
It looks like the ROK military needs to get themselves fielded with these systems to counter the drones North Korea is increasingly using.
It looks like Songdo is the place to go for anyone looking to fly their drone in the Seoul area:
Songdo in Incheon has become a mecca for local drone developers as it is free of regulations banning the use of drones, making it become a hot spot for drone makers.
Songdo was created by reclaiming 32.3 square kilometers (12.4 square miles) of sea in a mega-project launched in 2003. It is largely free from regulatory measures, as there are no military installations near the area, since it used to be a vast coastal region covered by seawater prior to 2003.
The absence of legal obstacles to fly drones is a boon for gadget developers, as Seoul is ridden with regulations banning the use of drones to protect important facilities such as the presidential office and the government complex building. Gyeonggi is not exempt from state regulations because of its proximity to the inter-Korea border and the presence of military installations there.
“One big advantage to testing a drone in Songdo is that it is without no-fly zones, which are common in Seoul,” said Park Sang-gook, director of the research center for the drone manufacturer We Make Drone. [Joong Ang Ilbo]
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un (2nd from L) watches a soldier holding a 1-meter-long drone during a recent visit to an army science and technology museum, in this photo released by a North Korean TV station on July 18, 2016. (For Use Only in the Republic of Korea. No Redistribution) (Yonhap)
In this photo provided by the Yangyang county government, farmer Kim Kwang-seop sprays agricultural pesticides by using a drone on his paddies in the eastern county on June 8, 2015. Kim said he has completed the work in just five minutes with the drone, compared with more than 20 minutes with manual labor. The utilization of drones is on a gradual increase in the country’s agricultural sector. (Yonhap)
North Korean radar and anti-aircraft batteries along the DMZ would probably locate and take out a number of the drones. I think such an idea would actually work better if executed by activist groups in China if they are able to not get cracked down on by the Chinese authorities:
A researcher has called on the United States to consider using drones to send USB sticks with information that can effectively win the hearts of North Koreans and provide them with information about the outside world.
Senior Researcher Kim Yon-ho at the U.S.-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies made the call in his recent contribution to Foreign Policy on Saturday.
Kim said that there are limitations to the conventional methods of smuggling high-tech data into North Korea, claiming that delivering USBs with drones is a high-tech alternative to traditional smuggling tactics.
The researcher said that due to the flourishing black market and technological developments, the means of access to outside media has advanced beyond televisions, radios, and DVDs into more interactive forms such as PCs, tablets and USB drives.
Kim said that USB drives are considered effective means of accessing information about the outside world, as they are smuggled through balloons and easily made available on the black market. [KBS World Radio]
You can read the whole Foreign Policy article at this link. The article pretty much makes the case that I have been making for year to execute a coordinated information warfare strategy within North Korea which should be part of a larger strategy to undermine the legitimacy of the Kim regime.
