Portable toilet mistaken for killer Nork drone

File under 'heightened tensions on the Korean peninsula'

In March and April, something resembling an unmanned aircraft appeared over South Korean airspace and came to grief on terra firma. Whatever the unidentified flying object was, it was painted blue.

North Korea denied all knowledge of the incidents.

Fast-forward to last week when a chap taking in the sights of Cheonggye-Don, a mountain adjacent to a town near Seoul, spotted something blue amid the foliage.

The chap called South Korean authorities who, according local newswire Yonhap, decided the blue ruin was worthy of investigation and ascended the mountain.

Yonhap says that expedition found the blue object, which upon closer examination “turned out to be part of a broken door of a mobile lavatory”.

That object may well have been unpleasant, but not so much that North Korea could contemplate its use as a weapon. If it had been a portable bog bin recovered at the end of a rock festival, it would attain that status and probably contravene a few chemical weapons treaties into the bargain. ®