AP, SEOUL (AP) — An unmanned U.S. military spy plane crash-landed near the border with communist North Korea, forcing the U.S. military to ground all planes of the same type deployed in South Korea last month, officials said Friday. Nobody was injured.
The plane, called the Shadow 200 Tactical Unmanned Aerial Vehicle, crash-landed Thursday night on a river bank in Dongduchon, 32 kilometres south of the border with the North, said Choi Yang-do, a spokesman of the 2nd U.S. Infantry Division.
The U.S. military grounded all Shadow 200 planes in South Korea and elsewhere in the world, except Iraq, pending an investigation into what caused the accident, Choi said.
The U.S. military began flying Shadow planes last month to help monitor North Korean military activities along its border with the South.
Shadow planes have a 4-metre wingspan. They fly at an altitude of between 3,000 metres and 4,260 metres.
Washington keeps 37,000 American troops in South Korea — a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean War.
