South Korean prosecutors seek drone chief arrest over operation in North Korea

South Korean prosecutors connected Sunday (July 20, 2025) said they person requested tribunal support to detain the caput of the subject drone portion arsenic portion of a probe into former President Yoon Suk Yeol and drone operations successful North Korea.

The peculiar counsel squad past week summoned the main of the Drone Operations Command, Kim Yong-dae, implicit allegations that Yoon ordered a covert drone cognition into the North past twelvemonth to inflame hostility betwixt the neighbours to warrant his martial instrumentality decree. The impeached Yoon has denied the allegations.

On Friday (July 18), Mr. Kim told reporters that the incidental was portion of a "clandestine subject operation" successful effect to the trash balloons from the North and not to provoke the neighbour.

In October, North Korea said the South had sent drones to scatter anti-North Korea leaflets implicit Pyongyang, and published photos of the remains of a crashed South Korean subject drone.

South Korea astatine the clip declined to disclose whether it had sent the drones. Mr. Kim was arrested connected Friday without a tribunal warrant, section media reported.

Prosecutors and constabulary are permitted to behaviour an "emergency arrest" if they person a beardown content that idiosyncratic is blameworthy of a superior transgression and that determination is simply a hazard that the idiosyncratic mightiness fly oregon destruct evidence.

Prosecutors stepped up investigations into the drone cognition aft indicting the jailed ex-President Yoon connected further charges for his short-lived declaration of martial instrumentality successful December.