Kim Yo-jong, sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, arrives at the Vostochny Cosmodrome in the Amur region, Russia, for a summit between Russian President Vladimir Putin and the North Korean leader, Sept. 13, 2023. Reuters-Yonhap
Inter-Korean tensions are escalating over propaganda leaflets, as North Korea threatened, Monday, to deploy unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to drop leaflets over Seoul. The North also reiterated its claim that the South Korean military recently sent leaflet-distributing drones into its territory.
“It would be interesting to see how they will bark if a drone appears in Seoul and scatters leaflets," Kim Yo-jong, the powerful sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, said in a statement via the North's mouthpiece Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).
Noting a hypothetical situation, she said, “An unidentified drone appears over Seoul and scatters leaflets denouncing ‘the puppet Yoon,'” apparently referring to President Yoon Suk Yeol. “Our military, individual organizations, or any individual have not flown any drones, cannot confirm such actions, and do not consider it worth responding to.”
Her remarks appear to sarcastically criticize the South Korean military's response to North Korea's claims that the South sent a drone carrying anti-regime leaflets over Pyongyang earlier this month and that they found debris from a UAV of the same type operated by the South Korea's military. In response to these claims, the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said, "We cannot verify (the claim), and the claim is not worth replying."
In response to a question about possible North Korean drone incursions, JCS spokesperson Col. Lee Sung-joon said during a briefing, "If a drone from the North intrudes (into South Korean territory), we'll take corresponding actions as well as appropriate measures to protect the safety and property of our people."
The KCNA also carried an analysis from North Korea's Ministry of National Defense on the flight log of the South Korean UAV that it claimed to have intruded Pyongyang.
According to the analysis, the drone took off from Baengnyeong Island in the West Sea at 11:25 p.m. on Oct. 8 and scattered “politically motivated rubbish” over Pyongyang between the North's foreign ministry building and the Sungri metro station at 1:32 a.m. on Oct. 9, as well as near the defense ministry at 1:35 a.m.
The North described this as a "shameless provocation by the South Korean military gangsters."
This image carried by North Korea's state-run Korean Central News Agency, Monday, shows the flight path of a drone that the North claimed was sent by the South Korean military on Oct. 8. Yonhap
South Korea's JCS declined to comment directly on the North's analysis again, stating that the claims are “neither worth confirming nor refuting.”
“North Korea has sent drones into our airspace over a dozen times in the past decade, threatening our people's safety. They should be ashamed of their claims," the JCS spokesperson said.
Analysts believe that North Korea may try to turn the hypothetical scenario mentioned by Kim into reality.
“Kim Yo-jong's comments about a hypothetical scenario are quite unusual. It appears to mock South Korea's response to the alleged Pyongyang drone incident and keep this issue as a source of inter-Korean tension,” said Yang Moo-jin, president of the University of North Korean Studies.
He added that the North's analysis concluding that the South Korean military was behind the alleged drone incursion could be a build-up to a potential attempt to drop anti-South Korean leaflets over key locations, such as the presidential office or JCS headquarters in Seoul.
"They would then claim it as a tit-for-tat move," Yang said.
Last Thursday morning, anti-South Korean propaganda leaflets carried by North Korean trash balloons were found in the presidential compound in Seoul's Yongsan District. It is unclear whether Yoon was in the office at that time. The president held a summit with Polish President Andrzej Duda in his office later that day.
A person collects anti-South Korean leaflets scattered near the presidential office in Seoul's Yongsan District, Oct. 24. Yonhap
The leaflets contained critical messages targeting Yoon and first lady Kim Keon Hee, some even comparing her to “a modern Marie Antoinette” for her apparently luxurious lifestyle.
This incident marked the first known case of North Korea using trash-carrying balloons to drop propaganda leaflets.
Since May, Pyongyang has launched thousands of trash-laden balloons on 30 different occasions, primarily carrying waste paper or plastic bags. Some critics have raised concerns that the North may be shifting the balloons' function from simply scattering trash to using them as tools for propaganda campaigns, or even for delivering hazardous materials.
During Monday's briefing, the JCS spokesperson described these North Korean leaflets on the presidential compound as “very crude” with “no real impact or significance.”
South Korea remains vigilant against potential North Korean drone incursions following an incident in December 2022, when five North Korean UAVs crossed the border. In response, the military established a drone operations command in September last year to address such threats.