[Courtesy of Korea Aerospace Research Institute]
A United Nations aviation agency will send a strong warning to North Korea for discharging strong electric waves to disrupt South Korea's satellite traffic navigation signals, the South's foreign ministry said Thursday.
At a meeting in Canada that ended on June 17, the board of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) decided to send a message urging North Korea not to disrupt Global Positioning System (GPS) signals, the ministry said.
The ICAO's secretary general will send a letter saying the disruption of GPS signals was a grave international issue threatening the safety of civilian planes, it said.
For six days from March 31, South Korea accused North Korea of waging a systematic electric warfare by discharging strong electric waves from different places along the border to disrupt South Korea's GPS signals.
About 1,000 airplanes from 14 countries reported GPS disruptions during the cited period, the ministry said. At that time, no serious damage was reported because the planes used alternative equipment
From 2010, North Korea has occasionally jammed GPS communications in South Korea, but Thursday's waves were strong enough to malfunction GPS communications used by planes and ships. South Korean officials believe North Korea has multiple GPS disruption tools with an operational range of more than 100 kilometers.
Aju News Lim Chang-won = cwlim34@ajunews.com
reporter
Park Sae-jin
swatchsjp@ajunews.com
