A young farm worker in Kaesong has been arrested after using a pesticide-spraying drone to secretly film inside private homes in the city’s Panmun district, prompting a citywide crackdown on drone use.
A source in Kaesong told Daily NK on Monday that the man, in his late 20s, worked at a local farm piloting a drone used to spray pesticide against crop pests. Late last month, the district’s security department arrested him on charges of illegally filming inside homes with the aircraft.
According to the source, the man flew the drone low over farmland as if spraying pesticide, then quietly steered it toward a residential area. Using a small camera mounted on the drone, he filmed through the windows of private homes.
A neighbor’s tip leads to arrest
The man was caught after he boasted about the footage and made lewd remarks while drinking with other young men in the neighborhood. A resident who overheard the conversation reported him to the security department, the source said.
Security officers raided the man’s home without warning and seized the phone used in the filming, along with devices storing the illegal recordings.
The subsequent investigation found that the man had used the pretext of pesticide spraying on multiple previous occasions to secretly film inside homes where women lived, saving the photos and videos as files on his phone. A forensic review of his phone reportedly turned up dozens of secretly filmed photos and videos, now held as evidence.
“The security department is not treating this as a simple case of public indecency but as an act of anti-socialist deviance and unauthorized drone filming, and is handling it strictly,” the source said. “They are investigating the details, including how many times he did this and who he targeted.”
Community reaction and tightened oversight
Word that the farm worker, thought to be doing routine pesticide work, had used the drone to secretly peer into homes spread quickly through the neighborhood, leaving many Panmun district residents, particularly women, shocked and humiliated, according to the source.
The Kaesong city party committee and the local branch of the National Intelligence Agency, reacted with alarm, viewing the case as evidence that drones distributed as part of agricultural modernization could be misused not only to satisfy personal curiosity but also to threaten internal security.
In response, Kaesong city issued an emergency directive to every farm in the area, ordering a full reinvestigation into the identities of all drone operators and a thorough inspection of drone flight records and video footage.
Oversight of drone use has also tightened. Even routine pesticide spraying now requires operators to fly under the supervision of an elementary party official or a security officer, the source said, referring to the lowest-level cell of the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea, which typically operates at the workplace level.
“Farms can no longer fly drones without authorization since this incident,” the source said. “Management of both drone operators and the aircraft themselves has been significantly strengthened to prevent them from being used for purposes other than their intended one.”
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September 15, 2026 at 02:06AM
by DailyNK(North Korean Media)