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| President Yoon Suk-yeol speaks during a Cabinet meeting at the presidential office in Seoul, Tuesday. Yonhap |
By Jung Min-ho
President Yoon Suk-yeol on Tuesday criticized the military's response to North Korean drones that intruded across the inter-Korean border the previous day, saying the incident exposed some problems with South Korea's readiness.
Speaking at a Cabinet meeting, Yoon said the military should be better prepared for such intrusions by North Korean drones and vowed to create a military unit specializing in unmanned aerial vehicles as part of efforts to strengthen South Korea's air defense capabilities.
"We have a plan to create a military drone unit tasked with monitoring key military facilities in North Korea. But we'll expedite the process of creating the drone unit after the incident yesterday," he said. "We'll also introduce state-of-the art stealth drones to strengthen our surveillance capability."
Yoon also voiced regret over the National Assembly's decision to cut the military budget for anti-drone operations, saying the incident once again showed how dangerous it is to rely on North Korea's "good faith" and paper agreements for peace.
South Korea's military has come under criticism after failing to shoot down none of the five North Korean drones that intruded into the South's airspace, where they traveled for hours.
Speaking to reporters later that day, Lt. Gen. Kang Shin-chul, chief director of operations at the Joint Chiefs of Staff, apologized. He said the military will take aggressive steps to improve comprehensive anti-drone capabilities from detection to destruction.
Defense experts contacted by The Korea Times said criticism toward the military is too harsh, while admitting that South Korea's porous aerial border needs to be addressed.
They said the military was able to, unlike in the past, detect the drones when they violated South Korean airspace and did the right thing by deciding not to use excessive force to destroy the unmanned aerial vehicles that flew over civilian-inhabited areas. The experts, however, pointed out that the military needs to improve the speed of its decision-making process, saying it could have prevented the drones from traveling deeper into the South in the first place.
They were the first North Korean drones confirmed to have infiltrated South Korean airspace since 2017, when one was found after crashing in Inje, Gangwon Province.
"It was notable that the radar system of our military was capable of detecting the small-size drones at the border. Our military was unable to do so in 2017 and in 2014, when two North Korean drones were found crashed near the border," Shin Jong-woo, a senior researcher at the Korea Defense and Security Forum, a think tank, said. "It was regrettable, however, that it took a longer time than it should have to determine what they were, which allowed them to travel further down to the areas, where civilians live."
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| This June 2017 file photo shows a North Korean drone found crashed in Inje, Gangwon Province / Yonhap |
Given that the use of anti-aircraft weapons could cause collateral damage, Shin believes the military's decision not to take that risk was appropriate.
"It would be reasonable not take the risk of damaging the lives of civilians or their property to destroy the small-size paper drones. It wasn't necessary," he said.
Yang Uk, an associate research fellow at the Asan Institute for Policy Studies, a think tank, agreed, saying the light-weight drones, a glider type with a wingspan of 2 meters or shorter, cannot carry many weapons.
"It was not impossible to use such small drones for attack purposes … But from the military's perspective, their sizes were not threatening," he said.
One of the drones traveled as far as the northern part of Seoul, while the others hovered largely in and around Ganghwa Island.
South Korea's military responded by firing warning shots and sending fighter jets and attack helicopters to shoot them down. The attack helicopters fired a combined 100 rounds, which failed to hit any of them. In doing so, a KA-1 light attack plane crashed during takeoff, but its two pilots both ejected safely.
The analysts said North Korea's latest provocation should prompt South Korea's military to invest more in developing drone capabilities, saying they would be a key to future warfare and the North also knows it.
Little is known about North Korea's drone capabilities. Some experts believe it has as many as 1,000 drones, mostly cheap, low-tech models. But leader Kim Jong-un previously said he would invest more into the technology.
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