[Editorial] Why did former staffers in Yoon’s presidential workplace fly drones into North Korea?

North Korea launched this picture of a drone it mentioned was found in Kaesong, with a spokesperson for the Korean Folks’s Military Common Employees claiming within the state-run KCNA that troopers had shot down South Korean drones in September 2025 and on Jan. 4. (Yonhap)

It seems that two South Korean males who admitted to sending drones to North Korean airspace had each labored within the presidential workplace throughout the Yoon Suk-yeol administration. 

Each offenders went to the identical college. As college students, they began a company for younger conservatives and went on to co-found a agency that manufactures drones. There have been quite a few disturbing revelations, together with the truth that the 2 males based their firm the exact same month that the Drone Operations Command started operations.

There must be a radical investigation into not solely these two people’ motives, but additionally whether or not they acted on their very own volition or have been engaged on behalf of others.  

Just lately, a person in his 30s claimed that he’d despatched a drone into North Korean airspace throughout a nationally televised interview. 

“I needed to get surveillance footage of uranium enrichment services whereas measuring ranges of heavy-metal contamination within the space [of the Ryesong River],” he mentioned. 

His reported motive was analysis, but it surely really appears to be like like an effort to throw the continuing investigation by a joint navy and police activity drive into North Korea’s claims of drone intrusions off the scent. 

The uranium and mining services talked about are in Pyongsan County, North Hwanghae Province, a spot that few laypeople would know of. To ship a drone, you want correct coordinates; how would two civilians get such data? 

At a time when the Yoon administration’s drone provocations had already made North Korea fairly delicate, these non-public actors declare to have despatched drones throughout the border at the very least thrice. There have to be another motive. 

These people reportedly labored as information monitoring brokers on a contract foundation for the Yoon administration’s presidential workplace across the similar time as each other. One having majored in mechanical engineering and the opposite aerospace engineering, they based a drone manufacturing firm on Sept. 22, 2023 — shortly after the Yoon administration established the Drone Operations Command, on Sept. 1, 2023. 

It’s well-known that Yoon urged the institution of the Drone Operations Command after North Korea despatched an unmanned aerial car close to the presidential workplace in Yongsan in December 2022. May it’s that these people who labored on the presidential workplace have been additionally assigned duties associated to this? 

Furthermore, their firm was created as a campus enterprise with assist from the startup incubator on the college the 2 males attended. This raises suspicions that the presidential workplace performed a task from the very starting of its institution.

The Yoon administration’s provocations of North Korea, equivalent to sending drones close to North Korean chief Kim Jong-un’s residence in Pyongyang, stay shrouded in thriller regardless of the particular counsel investigation into the rebellion. Investigations into issues just like the “inducing a North Korean assault across the Northern Restrict Line” talked about in former Protection Intelligence Command head Roh Sang-won’s pocket book have been largely uncared for: Yoon’s indictment didn’t point out the armed helicopter flights close to the NLL within the West Sea and K9 self-propelled howitzer firing drills, supposed to threaten North Korea. 

This civilian drone incident ought to function an impetus for a extra thorough investigation into suspicions of treason within the type of trying to bait North Korea into warfare as properly.

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