<기사제목>National Security Office: "Opposition's Claim of Directing Drone Deployment in Pyongyang is an Exaggeration and Political Offensive"

"Unidentified Rumor-Based Reports... Must Be Immediately Stopped"

In Seong-hwan, Deputy Director of the National Security Office Photo by Yonhap News

On the 9th, In Seong-hwan, the 2nd Deputy Director of the National Security Office, refuted the Democratic Party's Foreign Currency Attraction Fact-Finding Team's claim that there was an order to deploy drones to Pyongyang, stating, "In March of last year, we officially visited the Drone Command, but this was a unit visit conducted as part of on-site inspections of the major headquarters of the Army, Navy, and Air Force."

The National Security Office stated, "At that time, many soldiers from the Drone Command participated in official schedules such as business briefings," and added, "Connecting an official visit involving many personnel and work properly carried out to strengthen security posture to a 'North Wind campaign' is an excessive leap and an absurd political attack."

Additionally, Kim Yong-dae, the Commander of the Drone Operations Command, explained that during his visit to the National Security Office in August last year, he visited together with multiple officials from the Ministry of National Defense and the Defense Acquisition Program Administration to discuss drone force deployment plans and agenda items of the Defense Innovation Committee.

The Security Office emphasized, "Drone forces have rapidly emerged as a game changer in modern warfare through the Ukraine-Russia war," and added, "The drone readiness posture is such an important issue for our security that it is a core agenda item of the Presidential Defense Innovation Committee, which operates jointly with civilian, public, and military sectors."

They continued, "The Democratic Party's behavior of damaging the honor of the National Security Office by citing unidentified hearsay reports must stop immediately," and said, "We hope they recognize that the conspiracy theories propagated by a political party and the distortion of public opinion push national security into an unnecessary vortex of political strife."

The Democratic Party's Foreign Currency Attraction Fact-Finding Team claimed the day before that a senior official of the National Security Office visited the Drone Operations Command in the spring of last year, and in the summer, the Drone Commander visited the National Security Office to report, asserting that the Drone Command bypassed the official command chain of the Ministry of National Defense and the Joint Chiefs of Staff and received orders from Yongsan (the Presidential Office) to deploy drones to Pyongyang.