South Korea, Allies confront North Korea’s GPS signal jamming
FORUM Staff
For more than a decade, North Korea has been developing and intermittently testing its capabilities to jam signals from the network of satellites and receiving devices known as GPS, which are used for navigation, positioning and timing on Earth for everything from cars to planes and ships, including many military vessels.
In late May 2024, the regime’s efforts at disruption reenergized, culminating with at least five consecutive days of illegal jamming of navigation signals near South Korea’s northwestern border islands.
North Korea mainly targeted the Northern Limit Line in the Yellow Sea, the de facto western maritime boundary between the two Koreas, according to a Republic of Korea (ROK) military official, South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency reported. Although no military craft were hindered, the jamming caused glitches in the navigation systems of fishing boats and passenger ships, the official said.
South Korea raised its renewed concerns over North Korea’s repeated GPS jamming with the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) and the International Maritime Organization (IMO), Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lim Soo-suk said in June, according to Yonhap.
The international community considers jamming to be a hostile act and a form of electronic warfare, Reuters reported.
“Measures are expected to be taken at the international level as the North’s GPS jamming amounts to a violation of the international law,” said Lee Sung-jun, the ROK’s Joint Chiefs of Staff spokesperson, Yonhap reported.
Jamming transmitters can prevent a GPS receiver from distinguishing among satellite signals, effectively drowning out the GPS signal and inhibiting the receiver from determining its location.
Spoofing, meanwhile, entails sending false GPS signals to an adversary’s plane or ship to impair its ability to function. Such activities can also affect GPS receivers on commercial and private planes and ships, confusing captains, pilots and air traffic controllers, putting passengers and cargo at risk, and causing delays.
To counter North Korea’s GPS jamming attacks and other space-based threats, South Korea and the United States conducted a two-week joint space exercise in April 2024, Yonhap reported.
Military forces from the two nations ran simulations to deter interference with satellite communications and improve resiliency of GPS systems to potential North Korean threats. They also practiced identifying and targeting the origin of such attacks, Yonhap reported.
Disrupting GPS signals constitutes interfering with communications of other United Nations member states, which violates the ITU charter. GPS jamming also defies ICAO and IMO conventions on safe navigation of ships and aircraft.
“We have in the past requested the international organizations take necessary measures when similar incidents occurred,” Lim said.
In April 2016, for example, South Korea sent a statement to the U.N. Security Council denouncing the North Korean regime for jamming GPS signals near the border, according to Yonhap. Two months later, the ICAO warned the regime against conducting GPS jamming.
The IMO condemned North Korea in November 2016 for threatening ship navigation.
