An attack helicopter flies during an anti-drone training exercise in Paju, a city near the inter-Korean border, Thursday. Yonhap

Possibility of drone taking photos cannot be ruled out: spy agency

By Jung Min-ho

The North Korean drones that crossed into South Korea last week were not advanced ones: The glider type model, which appears to be an imitation of common Chinese commercial drones, probably cost less than 10 million won ($7,800), an expert says.

Yet the drones were able to create an air of anxiety and insecurity in South Korea, where the military is now scrambling to improve its anti-drone defense system. After having seen how effective the unmanned aerial vehicles can be for heightening tensions, the North will likely repeat such provocations in the year ahead, according to analysts Thursday.

"North Korea is expected to continue to use cost-effective methods for provocation such as a drone invasion," Oh Gyeong-seob, an analyst at the Korea Institute for National Unification (KINU), a think tank, said during a forum on North Korea's New Year messages. "What North Korea ultimately wants is to be recognized as a nuclear weapons state. To achieve that, it needs to keep stirring up tensions to move Washington ― but probably not to the point where South Korea and the U.S. would retaliate … Drones can be one of the effective tools for this."

This assessment comes the same day that South Korea's military shifted its previous stance to admit that one of the five North Korean drones entered the northern end of a no-fly zone surrounding the office of President Yoon Suk-yeol on Dec. 26.