North Korea has accused South Korea of orchestrating a recent drone infiltration over Pyongyang and delivered an ideological lecture to senior party officials about the incident. However, some officials in North Korea suspect that the intrusion may have been fabricated.
According to a source in Pyongyang, the lecture did not use printed materials, but rather an eight to ten-page audio-visual presentation.
The materials described the circumstances under which the authorities discovered the drone intrusion, including when they spotted it in the skies over Pyongyang. The content of the presentation was not significantly different from what the authorities had released through the media.
What was unusual, however, was that the materials described how Pyongyang residents found the leaflets dropped by the drone and reported them to the authorities.
The lecture gave a relatively detailed description of the incident and the identities of the people involved, saying, “Two janitors at the Mansudae Statues Management Office near the Central Committee Headquarters reported that they found the leaflets that fell on the grass during their early morning cleaning.”
The lecture then tried to stir up hostility against South Korea by saying, “If the enemy had dropped some other dangerous means on our revolutionary leadership instead of leaflets, the consequences would have been terrible.”
After the lecture, some officials tried to confirm for themselves whether what they had heard was true by inquiring through agencies connected with the Mansudae Statues Management Office. They also tried to find out if anyone else in downtown Pyongyang had seen the leaflets with their own eyes.
However, they found that no one at the Mansudae Statues Management Office had reported the leaflets. Since then, their suspicions about the drone incident have grown.
“If drones from South Korea flew over the headquarters of the Workers’ Party of Korea three times on October 3, 9 and 10, the authorities should have raised the military alert immediately. We can’t understand why it took them a full week after the first drone to announce what happened,” some officials said. “If the enemy military did this, the army should step forward. Why was it the foreign ministry that issued a statement?”
Other North Koreans believe the incident was faked as well. Daily NK asked a high-ranking source in North Korea if anyone in the country could make leaflets that would damage the image of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un amid the official veneration of Kim and his regime.
“Only one person could do it,” he replied.
The official said that Kim Yo Jong – deputy director of the ruling party’s propaganda and agitation department and the North Korean leader’s powerful sister – revealed her brother’s health status during a national emergency quarantine meeting in 2022 during the COVID-19 pandemic. To the official, this suggests that Kim Yo Jong could order the production of propaganda material critical of the North Korean leader.
During the 2022 meeting, Kim Yo Jong hinted that her brother had COVID-19, saying, “Even though he was seriously ill with a high fever, he could not lie down for a moment thinking of the people he had to take care of to the end in the face of the anti-epidemic war.”
Meanwhile, Kim Yo Jong said in a statement released through KCNA on October 15 that North Korea has “secured clear evidence that the ROK military gangsters are the main culprits of the hostile provocation of violating the sovereignty of the DPRK by intruding into the sky over its capital.” However, she did not disclose what the evidence was.
This article first appeared in Daily NK, which contacts multiple sources inside and outside North Korea to verify information. The Diplomat was not able to verify the claims independently.