North Korea called its campaign a “countermeasure” against propaganda leaflets dropped in the country by South Korean activists.
North Korea says it will stop sending garbage-filled balloons across the border into South Korea, claiming its campaign has been an effective countermeasure against propaganda sent by anti-regime activists in the neighboring country.
Since Tuesday, North Korea has released hundreds of balloons carrying garbage bags containing everything from cigarette butts to pieces of cardboard and plastic, Seoul’s military said on Sunday, threatening to retaliate if the provocations did not stop.
Hours later, North Korea said it would halt the campaign.
“We made the R.O.K. [Republic of Korea] clans have enough experience about how unpleasant they feel and how much effort is needed to remove the scattered papers,” Kim Kang Il, North Korean vice minister of defense, said in a statement carried by state media.
However, he warned that if South Korean activists again release anti-Pyongyang propaganda leaflets into balloons, North Korea will once again fly its own balloons to dump hundreds of times the amount of South Korean leaflets found in the air. North.
‘Low class’
South Korea called the balloons and simultaneous jamming of its neighbor’s GPS with nuclear weapons “irrational” and “low-class.” But unlike the spate of recent ballistic missile launches, the refusal campaign does not violate United Nations sanctions on Kim Jong Un’s isolated regime.
Seoul warned it would take strong countermeasures unless Pyongyang called off the balloon bombing, saying it went against the armistice agreement that ended Korean War hostilities between 1950 and 1953.
Activists in the South also launched their own balloons along the border, filled with leaflets and sometimes money, rice or flash drives loaded with K-dramas.
Earlier this week, Pyongyang described its “sincere 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 area, which are collectively home to nearly half of South Korea’s population.
The latest batch of balloons was filled with “waste such as cigarette butts, pieces of paper, pieces of fabric and plastic,” the Joint Chiefs of Staff said, adding that military and police officials were collecting them.
“Our military is carrying out surveillance and reconnaissance from the balloon launch points, tracking them through aerial reconnaissance and collecting fallen debris, prioritizing public safety,” he stated.
Balloon Wars
South Korea’s National Security Council met on Sunday and a presidential official said Seoul would not rule out the possibility of responding to the balloons by resuming propaganda campaigns on loudspeakers along the border with North Korea.
In the past, South Korea has broadcast anti-Kim propaganda to the North, which has angered Pyongyang.
“If Seoul decides to resume anti-North broadcasting through loudspeakers along the border, which Pyongyang detests as much as anti-Kim balloons, it could lead to limited armed conflict along border areas such as the 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, both leaders agreed to “completely cease all hostile acts toward each other in all domains,” including the distribution of leaflets.
South Korea’s parliament passed a law in 2020 that criminalized sending leaflets to the North, but the law – which did not detain activists – was repealed last year as a violation of 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 speech.
This story originally appeared on Aljazeera.com read the full story
