North Korea called its campaign a “countermeasure” against propaganda leaflets brought into the country by South Korean activists.
North Korea says it will stop sending balloons filled with trash across the border with South Korea, saying his campaign was an effective countermeasure against propaganda sent by anti-regime activists in the neighboring country.
Since Tuesday, North Korea has floated hundreds of balloons carrying bags of trash containing everything from cigarette butts to pieces of cardboard and plastic, the South Korean military said Sunday. threaten to retaliate if the provocations do not stop.
Hours later, North Korea announced it would end the campaign.
“We have made sure that the clans of the Republic of Korea (ROK) have enough experience to understand how unpleasant they feel and how much effort is needed to remove the scattered waste papers,” said Kim Kang Il, North Korea’s vice minister of defense, in a statement published by state media.
However, he warned that if South Korean activists were floating anti-Pyongyang propaganda leaflets again via balloons, North Korea will resume flying its own balloons to dump waste hundreds of times more numerous than the South Korean leaflets found in the North.
“Low class”
South Korea has called the balloons and simultaneous GPS jamming of its nuclear-armed neighbor “irrational” and “low class.” But unlike the wave of recent ballistic missile launchesthe refusal campaign does not violate United Nations sanctions against the isolated regime of Kim Jong Un.
Seoul has warned it will take strong countermeasures unless Pyongyang calls off the balloon bombings, saying it goes against the armistice agreement that ended Korean War hostilities from 1950 to 1953.
Southern activists have also floated their own balloons across the border, filled with leaflets and sometimes cash, rice or USB sticks loaded with K-dramas.
Earlier this week, Pyongyang described its “heartfelt gifts” as retaliation for propaganda-laden balloons sent to North Korea.
South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said the balloons landed in northern provinces, including the capital Seoul and the adjacent Gyeonggi region, which are collectively home to nearly half of South Korea’s population.
The latest batch of balloons was filled with “trash such as cigarette butts, scraps of paper, pieces of fabric and plastic,” the Joint Chiefs of Staff said, adding that military officials and police were collecting them.
“Our military conducts surveillance and reconnaissance from balloon launch points, tracks them through aerial reconnaissance, and collects fallen debris, prioritizing public safety,” the statement said.
Balloon wars
South Korea’s National Security Council met on Sunday and a presidential official said Seoul would not rule out responding to the balloons by resuming loudspeaker propaganda campaigns along the border with North Korea.
In the past, South Korea has spread anti-Kim propaganda to the North, which infuriates Pyongyang.
“If Seoul chooses to resume anti-North broadcasts via loudspeakers along the border, which Pyongyang hates as much as anti-Kim balloons, it could lead to limited armed conflict along the border areas, as in West Sea,” said Cheong Seong-Chang, director of Korean Peninsula strategy at the Sejong Institute.
In 2018, during a period of improving inter-Korean relations, the two leaders agreed to “completely cease all hostile acts against each other in all areas”, including the distribution of leaflets.
South Korea’s parliament passed a law in 2020 criminalizing sending leaflets to the North, but the law – which did not deter activists – was overturned last year for violating freedom of expression.
Kim Jong Un’s sister Kim Yo Jong – one of Pyongyang’s top spokespeople – mocked South Korea for complaining about the balloons this week, saying the North Koreans were simply exercising their freedom of expression.
