South Korea Sends Fighter Jets After Drones

South Korea said its military fired warning shots and deployed fighter jets and attack helicopters after five North Korean drones breached its airspace Monday. The Korea Times reported that one of the drones reached Seoul before turning back, per the Hill. South Korea did not try to shoot the drone down because it was near a civilian area, a military official said. Lee Seung-oh, a South Korean defense official, said the other four drones flew around Ganghwa island, per CNN. "This is a clear provocation and an invasion of our airspace by North Korea," Lee said at a briefing.

South Korea then dispatched manned and unmanned craft to the border region, and Lee said some crossed into North Korean airspace. While there, they filmed military installations and performed other reconnaissance tasks, he said. Hours after the North Korean drones showed up, they vanished from radar, per the Wall Street Journal. The last time South Korea said a drone had entered its territory was in 2017, when it announced that one had crashed while spying on an American-built missile defense system. (More South Korea stories.)