North Korea again sends balloons full of trash to South Korea

Seoul:

North Korea sent a new round of garbage-laden balloons toward the South on Saturday, Seoul’s military said, after anti-Pyongyang activists in the South said they had launched balloons carrying leaflets against leader Kim Jong Un on the other side of the South. border.

The announcement came hours after Seoul’s military said it was on alert for a new dirty salvo from North Korea, as the tit-for-tat balloon blitz accelerated once again.

“North Korea is again launching (suspected) balloons carrying trash to the South,” the Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement, advising the public to report any balloons to authorities and refrain from touching them.

The Seoul city government, as well as authorities in Gyeonggi Province, also sent a similar text alert to residents on Saturday, warning about the balloons.

North Korea sent hundreds of balloons in two waves last week with trash bags to the South, describing them as retaliation for anti-Pyongyang propaganda balloons sent the other way.

Pyongyang said it would stop last Sunday, but days later, a South Korean group called “Fighters for Free North Korea” said it had sent 10 balloons with flash drives containing K-pop music and 200,000 leaflets condemning Kim’s government.

Another group, made up of North Korean defectors, also said it had sent 10 balloons on Friday with 100 radios, 200,000 anti-Pyongyang leaflets and flash drives containing a speech by South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol.

Jang Se-yul, leader of the second group, told AFP on Saturday that his organization would not stop its balloon campaign, “whether Kim Jong Un sends balloons with trash again or not.”

Last year, South Korea’s Constitutional Court struck down a 2020 law that criminalized sending anti-Pyongyang propaganda, calling it an undue limitation on freedom of expression.

Experts say there is now no legal basis for the government to stop activists from sending balloons to North Korea.

South Korea’s unification ministry said on Saturday that the issue is “being addressed in light of” last year’s court ruling.

Kim’s powerful sister, Kim Yo Jong, mocked South Korea for complaining about the balloons last week, saying the North Koreans were simply exercising their freedom of speech.

‘Crash landing on you’

Last week, North Korean balloons landed in several locations in the South and were found carrying trash such as cigarette butts, cardboard scraps and used batteries.

In response, South Korea completely suspended a 2018 military agreement with the North that was intended to reduce tensions between the neighbors.

Seoul authorities condemned the North’s ballooning as a “low class” act and threatened countermeasures that Pyongyang said it would consider “unbearable.”

Activists in South Korea have long sent balloons to the North, filled with anti-Pyongyang propaganda, money, rice and Korean TV series on flash drives.

This has always infuriated North Korea, whose government is extremely sensitive to its people having access to South Korean pop culture.

Kuensaem, another South Korean activist group, told AFP it threw 500 plastic bottles into the sea on Friday near the border with North Korea.

The bottles were filled with rice, money and a flash drive with the South Korean TV series “Crash Landing on You” – which features a romance between a wealthy South Korean heiress and a North Korean army officer.

The group has been sending these materials to the North twice a month since 2015.

“We were just doing what we have been doing for a long time to help North Koreans who are starving,” group leader Park Jung-oh told AFP on Saturday.

Tensions surrounding confrontational propaganda have boiled over dramatically in the past.

In 2020, blaming anti-North leaflets, Pyongyang unilaterally severed all official military and political communications ties with Seoul and blew up a disused inter-Korean liaison office on its side of the border.

(Except the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)