It has been analyzed that North Korea's publicly disclosed suicide drone strike test involved a target resembling South Korean military equipment to train the drone's artificial intelligence (AI) to learn the shapes of South Korean equipment.

Kim Jong-un, Chairman of the Workers' Party of Korea, oversees the defense scientific research project of the newly developed and produced unmanned aerial technology consortium and detection electronic warfare research group on the 25th to 26th, as reported by the Korean Central News Agency on the 27th. /Courtesy of Korean Central News Agency

According to You Yong-won, a member of the National Power of Korea, who is a military journalist, North Korean media reported that in the drone strike on the 27th, targets imitating South Korean equipment, including the long-range surface-to-air guided weapon L-SAM, appeared.

Targets resembling the K1 tank and U.S. military Striker armored vehicles also appeared, while scenes were staged of suicide drones, presumed to be cardboard drones, attacking these targets.

North Korea explained in reports the previous day that these drones are "suicide attack drones equipped with new artificial intelligence technologies." Kim Jong Un, Chairman of the State Affairs Commission, noted that "the fields of unmanned equipment and artificial intelligence technology should be prioritized and developed in the modernization of the military."

You estimated that North Korea's suicide drone is likely capable of autonomous attacks by identifying the external forms of either South Korean or U.S. military equipment.

When North Korea publicly displayed performance tests of suicide-type attack drones in November of last year, it showed drones destroying BMW sedans. This time, as the targets have shifted from civilian cars to military vehicles, it is analyzed that the destructive power has likely increased.

Additionally, scenes of dropping bombs from a vertical takeoff and landing quadcopter to destroy targets were also revealed the previous day, highlighting that various types of attack drones are under development. This is the first public display of North Korea's bomb-dropping attack drone.

You pointed out that "North Korea is undergoing a transformation, modernizing its weapons systems to fit modern warfare while imitating military technologies from countries like China and Russia and drawing on experiences from the Ukraine war."