Amid an increasingly heated verbal exchange after the North accused its neighbor of flying drones over Pyongyang, the North is preparing to blow up highways that traverse the heavily militarised border with South Korea, Seoul announced on Monday.

According to a military official in South Korea, North Korean personnel were operating under covert conditions on the highways on its side of the border close to the east and west coasts. These operations are probably part of their plans to blow up the roadways, potentially beginning soon.
According to state media KCNA, the North Korean Army declared last week that it will entirely close all highways and railroads that lead to South Korea and defend the areas on its side of the border.

North Korea's defense ministry said on Sunday that the drones, which were detected over Pyongyang three days earlier this month, required a specific launcher or runway and could not be launched by a civilian group.

On Monday, Lee Sung-jun, a spokesperson for the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff, declined to comment on whether the drones were flown by the South Korean military or citizens.

North Korea issued more threats over the weekend, threatening to unleash a "horrible disaster" if it was discovered that South Korean drones were once more flying above Pyongyang.

Korean Central News Agency released a report stating that the general staff of North Korea's army has instructed artillery units over the weekend to "get fully ready to open fire" if a similar invasion occurs again.

According to the statement, the order was issued on October 12 and remained in effect until October 13. According to North Korea, Seoul dropped leaflets criticizing the Kim Jong Un government three times this month within Pyongyang using drones.

North Korea accused Seoul of deploying drones into its capital, Pyongyang, in a move called a "war provocation," and for a brief while ordered its forces along the South Korean border to stand ready to fire.

South Korea’s response

South Korea's military has stated that it refuses to answer queries about the drones because doing so would expose Pyongyang's technique of fabricating explanations for provocations.

According to Lee, South Korea has attempted to strengthen its anti-drone defenses since 2022, when five North Korean drones invaded its airspace and flew over the capital Seoul for several hours.

Lee Kyoung-haing, an expert on military drone operations at Jungwon University, said civilians would have no trouble obtaining drones with round-trip ranges of 300 kilometers (186 miles) from the South to Pyongyang, carrying modest payloads such as leaflets.
The 1950-53 conflict between the two Koreas ended in an armistice rather than a peace treaty, hence the two Koreas remain formally at war.

The cross-border links are leftovers of moments of rapprochement between the countries, including a 2018 summit in which the leaders announced that there would be no more conflict and that a new era of peace had begun.

North Korea has reinstalled heavy weaponry into the Demilitarised Zone border buffer and restored guard stations after the two sides declared a 2018 military pact to reduce tensions erroneous.