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North Korea released this photo of a drone it said was discovered in Kaesong, with a spokesperson for the Korean People’s Army General Staff claiming in the state-run KCNA that soldiers had shot down South Korean drones in September 2025 and on Jan. 4. (Yonhap)

The South Korean government and armed forces have launched an investigation into claims by North Korea that its territorial airspace was invaded by South Korean drones.

With Pyongyang alluding to the possibility of a retaliatory response, inter-Korean relations are being put to the test after a seeming shift toward passive peace with the arrival of the Lee Jae Myung administration. Lee himself cited the severity of the situation in ordering the establishment of a joint military and police investigation team.

On Sunday, the Blue House National Security Office issued an announcement to the press declaring that the administration would “determine the facts about the drone issue through a joint military-police investigation and disclose the findings in a prompt manner.”

“We reiterate that the administration has no intention of provoking or inciting North Korea,” it stressed.

This was an official response to remarks made earlier that morning by Kim Yo-jong, the sister of Kim Jong-un and a vice department director of the Workers’ Party of Korea Central Committee, who wrote, “Clear is just the fact that the drone from the ROK violated the airspace of our country.”

“This requires explicit explanation,” she said in her statement.

In a statement on Saturday by a spokesperson for the Korean People’s Army General Staff, North Korea claimed that South Korean drones had infiltrated its territorial airspace in September of last year and on Jan. 4 of this year. That statement said that South Korea should “be ready to pay a high price for having committed another provocation of infringing on the sovereignty of the DPRK,” using the abbreviated form of North Korea’s formal name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

Commenting on the alleged drone infiltration on Jan. 4, North Korea claimed that its military units had “detected and tracked an air target moving northward in the sky over the area of Hado-ri, Songhae-myon, Kanghwa County of Inchon City,” adding that the drone in question was “equipped with surveillance devices.”

It also said that a drone departed from the area of Jeokseong township in Paju, Gyeonggi Province, at around 11:15 am on Sept. 27 last year and entered the airspace around Pyongsan County in North Hwanghae Province before being shot down by the North Korean military the same day and crash-landing into a paddy in Jangpung County in Kaesong.

After the first announcement by North Korea, the South Korean Ministry of National Defense responded on Saturday morning with an initial statement in which it said, “It has been confirmed that our armed forces did not operate drones on the date claimed by North Korea.”

At around noon the same day, the Blue House held a National Security Council working-level coordination meeting, after which it reiterated that “the military had not operated any drones.” That evening, Lee himself issued a statement ordering a “prompt and rigorous investigation by a joint military and police investigation team,” noting that “if it is true [that civilian drones entered North Korean airspace], this would be a severe crime that threatens peace on the Korean Peninsula and national security.”

In her statement on Sunday morning, Kim Yo-jong said, “I, personally, appreciate that the ROK Ministry of Defence took a wise choice for survival when it made public its official stand never to provoke or irritate us.”

At the same time, she stressed, “The essence of the situation lies not in whether its manipulator is from the military or civilians.”

“If they [South Korean officials] brand it as a deed of a civilian organization and then try to assert a theory that it is not an infringement upon the sovereignty, they will see a lot of UAVs by the DPRK's civilian organizations,” she warned, suggesting the potential for a retaliatory response.

Administration insiders are concerned that the situation could undermine the effectiveness of efforts to reduce military tensions since Lee took office, including the suspension of loudspeaker broadcasts to the North and demolition of related equipment, as well as a halt to the distribution of leaflets in the North by private citizens.

Some within the ruling Democratic Party have proposed an inter-Korean joint investigation, suggesting that it could provide an opportunity for restoring dialogue and re-establishing interchange and trust.

By Jang Ye-ji, staff reporter

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