NORTH KOREA – North Korea on Saturday said that its most hostile enemy is South Korea, adding that it breached its sovereignty with a drone incursion earlier in the week.

South Korea “committed another grave infringement upon the sovereignty of the DPRK (North Korea) by making its drone violate the DPRK’s airspace from the outset of the year,” according to state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).

KCNA said that on Jan. 4, North Korea’s military detected and monitored an aerial object traveling north from the airspace above South Korea’s Incheon.

It added that the military used specialized electronic warfare equipment to disable the drone, causing it to crash 1,200 meters (0.746 miles) from Muksan-ri, a rural village on the outskirts of Kaesong near the inter-Korean border.

KCNA said that on Sept. 27, a drone, which took off from the South’s border city of Paju, fell into Jangphung county, Kaesong, after being struck down by the North’s electronic means.

In response to those claims, South Korean Defense Minister Ahn Gyu-back on Saturday denied the South Korean military’s involvement in the drone incursions in September and earlier this week.

Noting that the drones were not models operated by the South Korean military, Ahn told Yonhap News that the North’s claims were “absolutely not true.”

Separately, the KCNA report said South Korea “is the enemy most hostile towards us that can never be changed in nature, and the object to be certainly collapsed by us if it attacks.”

Pyongyang urged the international community to “clearly understand what is the root cause of escalating tension on the Korean peninsula and inviting the danger of armed conflict,” it said.

ROK (South Korea) military warmongers will surely be forced to pay a dear price for their unpardonable hysteria, it added.

South Korean President Lee Jae Myung has sought to restore ties with Pyongyang since taking office in June, but North Korea has not responded.

Inter-Korean relations deteriorated sharply under the previous South Korean administration of Yoon Suk Yeol, who was ousted last year after imposing controversial martial law.

Yoon was also indicted of “benefiting the enemy” due to his alleged dispatch of drones to North Korea in October 2024 to provoke retaliation from Pyongyang and use it as justification for his future declaration of martial law.