President Yoon Suk-yeol speaks during a Cabinet meeting at the presidential office in Seoul, Tuesday. Yonhap

By Jung Min-ho

President Yoon Suk-yeol on Tuesday criticized the military's response to North Korean drones that intruded across the inter-Korean border the previous day, saying the incident exposed some problems with South Korea's readiness.

Speaking at a Cabinet meeting, Yoon said the military should be better prepared for such intrusions by North Korean drones and vowed to create a military unit specializing in unmanned aerial vehicles as part of efforts to strengthen South Korea's air defense capabilities.

"We have a plan to create a military drone unit tasked with monitoring key military facilities in North Korea. But we'll expedite the process of creating the drone unit after the incident yesterday," he said. "We'll also introduce state-of-the art stealth drones to strengthen our surveillance capability."

Yoon also voiced regret over the National Assembly's decision to cut the military budget for anti-drone operations, saying the incident once again showed how dangerous it is to rely on North Korea's "good faith" and paper agreements for peace.

South Korea's military has come under criticism after failing to shoot down none of the five North Korean drones that intruded into the South's airspace, where they traveled for hours.

Speaking to reporters later that day, Lt. Gen. Kang Shin-chul, chief director of operations at the Joint Chiefs of Staff, apologized. He said the military will take aggressive steps to improve comprehensive anti-drone capabilities from detection to destruction.

Defense experts contacted by The Korea Times said criticism toward the military is too harsh, while admitting that South Korea's porous aerial border needs to be addressed.

They said the military was able to, unlike in the past, detect the drones when they violated South Korean airspace and did the right thing by deciding not to use excessive force to destroy the unmanned aerial vehicles that flew over civilian-inhabited areas. The experts, however, pointed out that the military needs to improve the speed of its decision-making process, saying it could have prevented the drones from traveling deeper into the South in the first place.