North Korea stops spy fights due to fuel shortage

Yonhap news agency, quoting unidentified government and military sources, said the impoverished country’s military has had to halt training flights of the Soviet-designed AN-2 planes as the fuel shortages have been worsened by soaring oil prices.

“We found (North Korea) is diverting fuel oil for AN-2 planes to training of other aircraft, and that is why their flights have been suspended for a long time,” Yonhap quoted a South Korean government official privy to North Korean affairs as saying.

North Korea has about 300 aging single-engine AN-2 biplanes which can carry up to 13 armed special operation forces to be parachuted deep into South Korean territory in case of war, according to the report. The planes are believed to be a Chinese version made of wood and cloth, making them difficult to detect on radar.

An official at the South Korean Defense Ministry said he was aware of the Yonhap report, but declined to confirm its accuracy.

“Our ministry guideline is that we don’t officially comment on intelligence on the North,” the official said, requesting anonymity under ministry policy.

Officials at the National Intelligence Service, South Korea’s main spy agency, were not immediately available to comment on the report.

The two Koreas fought a three-year war that ended in 1953 with an armistice, not a peace treaty, technically leaving them in a state of war. Hundreds of thousands of combat-ready troops are stationed along the world’s most heavily fortified border.

However, relations between the two countries have improved in recent years, and their leaders held a second-ever summit early this month.

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