Korea tensions escalate amid surveillance drones accusation

North Korea has accused US and South Korean authorities of fabricating the results of a probe that concluded Pyongyang sent small surveillance drones, or unmanned aircraft, to spy on key South Korean installations in March.

A spokesman for the North’s military attacked the United States for what it said was a blindly backed confrontational conspiracy devised by the government of South Korean president Park Geun-hye, whom it called a “political prostitute”.

“If Washington pays heed only to what its stooges trumpet, it is bound to be accused of being a senile grandfather trying to stop a child from crying,” the unnamed spokesman said in a statement carried by the official KCNA news agency.

In a rare direct attack on the North Korean regime, South Korean Ministry of Defence spokesman Kim Min-seok said the North’s statement was “deeply regrettable” and that Pyongyang regularly lies so deserves to be discredited.

“North Korea isn’t a real country is it? It doesn’t have human rights or freedom. It exists solely to prop up a single person,” Kim said in Seoul.

“It is an unreal country that constantly lies and uses historically backward-looking rhetoric. That’s why it should cease to exist,” Kim said, using uncharacteristically aggressive language.

The North Korean statement was the latest in a recent series of written attacks against the South Korean president.

In April, North Korea described US president Barack Obama as Park’s “pimp”, and this month called the US president a “wicked black monkey”.

South Korean and US officials jointly examined three drones that were recovered in three different locations near the Korean border over a two-week period starting in late March.

The second was discovered soon after a three-hour artillery barrage between North and South Korea in waters near a disputed maritime border.

In April, North Korea proposed a joint probe into the crashed drones with the South, but Seoul rejected the proposal.