MOSCOW, December 26. /TASS/. The UAVs that ventured into South Korean airspace from North Korea were most likely reconnaissance drones. Similar incidents have already occurred in the past, so the current one should not be a reason for an armed conflict, says leading researcher Konstantin Asmolov, of the Center for Korean Studies at the Institute of China and Modern Asia under the Russian Academy of Sciences.

"We are speculating only about alleged objects, because so far the South Koreans have not yet presented any debris," Asmolov told TASS on Monday. "On the other hand, there is no confirmation that these were combat drones."

The expert believes that "the drones were purely for reconnaissance."

"This already happened in 2014 and 2017," the scholar recalled.

Not an escalation

Asmolov stresses that "this is certainly not a qualitatively new level of escalation, especially in contrast to North Korea’s previous shows of muscle or South Korea’s military exercises."

Therefore, "it is inappropriate to say that the Korean Peninsula is on the brink of war."

The drone incident does not play into anyone’s hands, the expert says, "although it will certainly serve as a pretext for muscle flexing and bellicose rhetoric on both sides of the border." At the same time, "this is not a casus belli" (formal reason for war). The risk of an aggravation of the conflict or possible interference in the Sino-US standoff is very slim, if at all.

"We are likely to see an upsurge in skirmishes inside South Korea," Asmolov forecasts. "The Democrats (the opposition party at the moment - TASS) will claim that [President] Yoon Suk-yeol’s militant rhetoric has annoyed North Korea to the point of holding such an operation, while [the ruling] Conservatives will respond that [the former Democrat president] Moon Jae-in's defeatist policies have seriously harmed the level of combat readiness, letting North Korean drones intrude with such ease."

According to the South Korean military, "unidentified objects" were detected in border areas of Gyeonggi-do province at about 10:25 a.m. local time (4:25 a.m. Moscow time). The UAVs crossed the military demarcation line and appeared in Paju, Gimpo, on Ganghwa Island, causing the temporary suspension of 30 civilian flights at Seoul’s airports.

In response, the Republic of Korea scrambled its planes, helicopters and other aircraft. The last time North Korean drones violated the border was in 2017.