`Drones belonged to N. Korea’

The Ministry of National Defense (MND) said Friday it was certain that three recently crashed spy drones belonged to North Korea.

The ministry plans to create a team composed of international experts to confirm this.

“We have a lot of evidence, which makes us quite sure that the unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) came from North Korea,” a ministry official said in an interim report on a weeks-long investigation.

“They took pictures of South Korean military installations. Considering the fact that their flying ranges were less than 300 kilometers, they could not have come from China or Japan,”

He added that the light-blue UAVs look identical to models the North disclosed recently, and are totally different from South Korean drones. The military also retrieved six fingerprints that were not registered in the massive government data base.

However, the MND admitted that such evidence was not a smoking gun. As a result, a special team will examine the interiors of the drones along with global experts, which will take up to two months.

“Components from many countries were used to build the drones including from Japan, China, the United States, Czech Republic and South Korea but producers’ logos and serial numbers were erased,” the official said.

“The dedicated team, which will include experts from the U.S., will carry out an in-depth examination on significant parts such as the central processing unit and data storage module. They will seek more compelling evidence.”

The three drones are believed to have flown autonomously using global positional system (GPS) coordinates on the strength of autopilot software. Hence, decoding the coordinates will reveal their routes in detail.

But South Korean experts have struggled to decipher the complex North Korean software which they are unaccustomed with.

If the North is found to be the origin of the UAVs, the ministry will issue an official protest to Pyongyang and come up with additional countermeasures; something experts say will have little effect on the reclusive state.

“No matter what military action Seoul takes, it will have very limited impact on the North. Do you think Pyongyang would flinch at our protests?” said Kim Jong-dae, editor of Defense 21 Plus, a security monthly.

“Rather, I think that the South should deal with the violations of its airspace through diplomatic channels. How about bringing the case to the U.N. or consulting with neighboring countries to craft joint countermeasures?” By Kim Tae-gyu, The Korea Times