By Bond Robertson 
South Korea fired warning shots Monday morning after a North Korean drone violated South Korean airspace, Reuters news agency reported, citing the South Korean media house. Yonhap.
A fighter jet and two helicopters were dispatched to shoot down the drone, which was said to have flown over the South Korean capital, Seoul.
South Korea, in a statement, described the North Korean drone in South Korean airspace as an “obvious provocation,” Reuters writes.
This will be the first time since 2017 that a North Korean drone has violated South Korean airspace.
A South Korean military spokesman said that South Korea quickly responded to the provocation by sending planes north of the military border.
According to Reuters, it is not known whether the mission to shoot down the drone was successful.
The fighter jet, a KA-1 type, is said to have been involved in an accident in connection with the mission and crashed about 140 kilometers east of the South Korean capital, Seoul. The two pilots on board must have managed to escape before the plane hit the ground, and are now in hospital.
This news comes less than three days after North Korea launched, according to South Korean defense, two ballistic missiles towards the sea.
– We observed two short-range missiles fired by North Korea into the East Sea from Pyongyang’s Sunan region, the defense statement said. The East Sea is also known as the Sea of Japan.