hankyoreh

one in Baeknyeong Island (left) and the other in Paju

By Park Byong-su, senior staff writer and Choi Hyun-june, staff reporter

Military authorities are tentatively concluding that a small drone that crashed in Paju, Gyeonggi Province last month was North Korean, after fingerprint analysis failed to produce any matching domestic records.

Printing on the drone was also reportedly found to match North Korean vocabulary.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, a military officials told the Hankyoreh on Apr. 2 that the “Paju drone did have fingerprints on it, so we compared it to prints registered here in South Korea, but apparently there was no match.”

The lack of a match suggests the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) does not belong to a local aircraft hobbyist or other South Korean, which increases the odds that it was sent by the North.

Military authorities currently believe the aircraft was sent as far as Seoul by North Korea, before crashing in Paju while making a return flight.

“There was enough fuel left in it to take it into North Korea,” said a senior official in the Ministry of National Defense on condition of anonymity. “Also, the fact that its recovery method was a parachute landing - which is only used by the military - suggests that this was North Korea’s work.”

So what would lead North Korea to send a drone? Its fixation on UAVs could be an ironic result of its inability to match the kind of state-of-the-art reconnaissance capabilities possessed by South Korea or the US. While drones can be used for attacks when loaded with weapons, such an action would be equal to a declaration of war, making it unlikely that an attack was North Korea’s intention.

To begin with, North Korea reportedly began UAV development in the 1990s with the introduction of blueprints and prototypes from Russia, the Middle East, and China. The South Korean military believes the North’s reconnaissance aircraft include the Panghyon I and II - modified version of China’s D-4 (ASN-104) - and Russian Pchela-1T and VR-3 craft. It also unveiled a target drone last year that was similar in design to the US’s MQM-107D Streaker.

But the drone that crashed in Paju appears have had only a rudimentary level of technology. Picture quality on its camera was lower than that available on Google Earth.

“There was a Japanese Canon camera without zoom capabilities, and we can imagine they were shooting at distances of 1 to 1.5 kilometers,” said a Ministry of National Defense official.

“With that level of technology, it’s not really practical for military or terrorist purposes,” the source added.

The drone also lacked real-time signal transmission capabilities to contact a ground station, which means the craft itself would have to be recovered before any photographic data could be gleaned. In terms of flight capabilities, it lacked terrain-referenced navigation, a state-of-the-art technology that allows aircraft to freely change course to suit the terrain.

“It’s designed to fly at altitudes of one to 1.5 kilometers, so this is a very basic level of flight technology where it can’t move up and down according to the terrain,” explained a military official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The fuselage of the Paju drone was found by military and intelligence analysts to be made of polycarbonate, with sky blue paint to conceal it from naked-eye observation. Data given by the Ministry of National Defense reported a fixed-wing body with gull wings and no tail wing, a two-blade propeller, a four-cycle engine of the kind found on motorcycles, and a wireless transmitter.

In comparison, the South Korean military’s UAVs - including the Songgolmae, Saercher, and Skylark II - have much more advanced technology. The Songgolmae, which was introduced at the corps level in 2002, provides real-time video information on North Korean troops, equipment, and moving targets. It also offers real-time remote control and automatic navigation by program, and is designed to return home automatically if its communications link is severed.

The South Korean armed forces also plan to introduce four high-altitude Global Hawk aircraft by 2018. The Global Hawk is a state-of-the-art UAV that flies 20 km above the ground and uses radar and infrared detection equipment to discern objects as small as 0.3 meters at the surface.

“We don’t send our UAVs north,” said a senior military intelligence officer on condition of anonymity. “We get information on North Korean movements at the front from manned aircraft like the Geumgang and Baekdu and from reconnaissance satellites, so that’s a risk we don’t need to take.”

“If North Korea is sending drones, that suggests that it‘s that hungry for intelligence about the South Korean military,” the official added.

Please direct questions or comments to [english@hani.co.kr]