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By John Feng
China Editor
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A senior North Korean official on Sunday accused the United States of "hostile air espionage," detailing what he said were more than a dozen aircraft involved in reconnaissance missions against the Pyongyang regime this month.
Kim Kang Il, the number two in North Korea's Defense Ministry, said at least 16 U.S. Air Force surveillance planes flew sorties in the past two weeks at the de facto inter-Korean border, which is demarcated by the heavily fortified Demilitarized Zone (DMZ).
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"The U.S. and the ROK [Republic of Korea] puppet air force are[...]conducting air espionage at the level beyond the wartime situation by repeatedly mobilizing reconnaissance drone RQ-4B and other reconnaissance aircraft almost without any time lag every day," Kim said in a May 25 statement released the following day by North Korea's official Korean Central News Agency.
He was referring to the official names of the Republic of Korea in the south and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea in the north.
The U.S. Defense Department and the U.S. Forces Korea did not immediately respond to written requests for comment.
South Korea's Defense Ministry and the North's embassy in Beijing did not answer calls on Sunday.
Pyongyang has conducted a record number of strategic missile tests under the leadership of Kim Jong Un, defying numerous U.N. Security Council resolutions that ban his country's development of ballistic and nuclear technologies.
In recent years, amid Russia's war in Ukraine, North Korea has also been accused of supplying Russian troops with a steady flow of weapons by sea—although both Pyongyang and the Kremlin deny trading arms.
North Korea said the U.S. deployed five RC-135 aircraft and 11 U-2S spy planes against it this month.
Signals tracked by the Flightradar24 website this month showed an RC-135U Combat Sent electronic intelligence plane sweeping the DMZ in hourslong sorties on May 17 and May 23.
On May 21, the flight-tracking website showed an RC-135W River Joint, an Air Force signals intelligence platform, operating south of the North Korea border for about six hours.
"Such hostile military espionage, together with various military drills, has become the root cause of ever-escalating regional military tensions," Kim Kang Il was quoted as saying.
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The Pentagon typically does not comment on specific operations and says U.S. forces fly where international law allows.
Air Force fact sheets say the Combat Sent and the River Joint have an operation range of around 4,000 miles. The U-2S Dragon Lady, a near-space surveillance aircraft "routinely flown at altitudes over 70,000 feet," can stay airborne for 7,000 miles, it says.
Meanwhile, the RQ-4B Global Hawk, a remotely piloted long-endurance intelligence drone, can operate for more than 30 hours with a range of more than 14,000 miles, according to the U.S. Air Force.
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