North Korea threatens to shoot down US spy planes

North Korea has threatened to shoot down US spy planes it accuses of violating its airspace, as South Korea’s president prepares to urge Nato countries to demonstrate their willingness to deter nuclear aggression from Pyongyang.

Accusing the US of conducting “hostile espionage activities” by flying military reconnaissance planes off the eastern and western coasts of the Korean peninsula, an unnamed North Korean defence ministry official said Pyongyang was ready to respond to Washington’s “reckless acts”.

“There is no guarantee that such a shocking accident as the downing of a US Air Force strategic reconnaissance plane will not happen,” the official said, according to North Korea’s state news agency on Monday.

The warning comes as South Korea’s conservative president Yoon Suk Yeol departs for Europe to attend this week’s summit of Nato leaders in Lithuania.

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“Now is the time to clearly demonstrate that the international community’s determination to deter North Korea’s nuclear weapons programme is stronger than North Korea’s desire to develop nuclear weapons,” Mr Yoon told AP on Monday.

In April, Mr Yoon and US president Joe Biden announced a new bilateral nuclear consultative group to give Seoul more insight and input into US war planning. Washington also pledged more deployments of nuclear-capable bombers and other strategic assets on temporary missions to South Korea.

The deployments will include the first visit of a US nuclear ballistic submarine to South Korea since the early 1950s, an announcement to which Pyongyang responded with outrage.

The North Korean defence official on Monday accused the US of engaging in “the most undisguised nuclear blackmail” with its planned deployment of the submarine.

“Now we are exercising the utmost patience and restraint, but there is a limit to all things and we are now teetering on the critical point when the US must be concerned,” the official said.

The US embassy in Seoul did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In 1969, North Korea shot down a US navy reconnaissance plane flying over the Sea of Japan as part of a programme to monitor communications among members of the Soviet bloc. The incident, which killed 31 American service personnel, is still celebrated by North Korean state media.

North Korea is also developing surveillance and combat drones as part of a military drone programme that dates back to the late 1980s.

In May, Pyongyang attempted to launch a military reconnaissance satellite into space, triggering an aborted evacuation order in Seoul. The satellite crashed into the Yellow Sea west of the Korean peninsula and has since been recovered by South Korean authorities.

[ North Korea fires missile that may be new type of harder-to-detect weapon ]

This week, Mr Yoon will attend his second Nato summit after he and the leaders of Japan, Australia and New Zealand were invited to the previous summit in Madrid last year. At that summit, the alliance formally defined China as “a challenge” in its strategic concept for the next decade. – Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2023