[Yonhap Photo]
A suspected North Korean spy drone using a Sony camera took pictures of the site for a US missile shield in a remote rural area in South Korea before it was found last week to have crashed near the heavily guarded inter-Korean border, military authorities in Seoul said.
The drone, powered by two Chech-made engines, took hundreds of pictures as it flew at an altitude of up to three kilometers (1.8 miles) deep into South Korean territory, the South's defense ministry said. It was retrieved last Friday in the northeastern border town of Inje.
Ten pictures were taken on a golf course in Seongju some 200 kilometers (124 miles) southeast of Seoul where two launchers for the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system were deployed on April 26, the ministry said, adding most other photos contained images of forest land and residential areas between Seongju and Inje.
The ministry said the drone was apparently heading back to North Korea when it crashed due to an exhaustion of fuel.
The South's Joint Chiefs of Staff said earlier that the drone with a short tail wing was 1.8 meters long and 2.4 meters wide. Military officials accused Pyongyang of having used the drone for espionage, insisting it was similar to one retrieved in 2014 on the front-line island of Baengnyeong near the disputed Yellow Sea border.
Pyongyang has developed a variety of unmanned aerial vehicles or drones. South Korea recovered several North Korean drones which crashed south of the border in 2014. A North Korean drone crossed the border in January last year and flew back quickly after South Korean troops fired shots.
North Korean drones are nowhere near as sophisticated as those used by the United States, deployed mainly for short-range missions to take pictures, but concerns are growing that they could be weaponized for future attacks.
Pyongyang has never acknowledged the existence of spy drones flying across the border.
Lim Chang-won = cwlim34@ajunews.com
reporter
Park Sae-jin
swatchsjp@ajunews.com
