In December 2022, five North Korean drones crossed into the South’s airspace, prompting the military to fire warning shots and deploy fighter jets, but none of the UAVs were destroyed.

On Monday, South Korea’s joint chiefs of staff said more analysis was needed to determine the similarities between the newly-unveiled drones and Russia’s ZALA Lancet and the Iranian-designed Shahed, reported Reuters.

Kim Jong-un and Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, have recently pledged to step up military cooperation, and Pyongyang has been accused by the US and South Korea of supplying munitions for Moscow’s war machine in Ukraine in exchange for high-level technology.

“We understand that some gifts (drones) were given in an exchange between North Korea and Russia in the past…We need to analyse various measures to see if those have improved performance,” a JCS spokesperson said in a briefing.

Last month, South Korea’s National Defence Acquisition Programme Administration (DAPA) announced plans to deploy new “Star Wars” lasers to melt drones dispatched from the North out of the sky.

The new laser weapons, which would melt the surface of the drone causing its internal components to catch fire, would be in place by the end of the year, DAPA said.