North Korean UAV took 190 photos of South Korean presidential office
South Korea’s defense ministry says one of the two unmanned aerial vehicles recently found crashed in the country had taken dozens of pictures of the presidential office of Cheong Wa Dae.
The ministry believes the drone, which was found north of Seoul in the city of Paju late last month, malfunctioned and crashed as it was headed back to North Korea.
They added that the aircraft had flown at one point over the presidential office for 20 seconds and a Japanese-made Nikon camera attached to it took around a hundred and 90 pictures.
The resolution of the pictures was low, but the plane had a wireless transmitter embedded into it.
That raised speculation that Pyongyang could have received the photos in real time, but the ministry said Thursday that’s impossible considering the rudimentary technology and low frequency of the equipment.
The South’s National Security Council standing committee held an emergency meeting on Wednesday to discuss the recent discoveries and to come up with plans to prevent UAV’s from infiltrating the nation’s air defense network.
A second UAV was found on Monday on the Baengnyeongdo island, one hour after hundreds of artillery rounds were exchanged between the two Koreas.
According to unnamed government sources, the drone found this week was launched from an airport in Hwanghaenam-do, North Korea. South Korea’s defense ministry says it had detected the drone on radar and tried to shoot it down, but that it crashed on the island after running out of fuel.
The two drones recently found are capable of loading up to one kilogram of explosives or chemical weapons.
Kim Hyun-bin, Arirang News.
