SEOUL, South Korea — It’s not the cross-border dam South Koreans feared, but a balloon carrying a trash bag has floated away North Korea and struck the presidential complex, security officials said Wednesday.
Seoul’s Presidential Security Service told NBC News by phone that it had tracked the balloon in real time as it was carried by winds through its neighbor with nuclear weaponsborder, until it finally landed at the presidential complex in the South Korean capital.
It posed no danger, the agency added.
Balloons emerged as a confusing new weapon of war earlier this year. Since May, North Korea has been floating thousands of balloons with garbage bags attached to them, which became a new source of tension between the two Koreas. Some were filled with bottles, old batteries and even manure, but more recently they only carried waste paper.
Pyongyang said the launches were a retaliatory response to activists and defectors who for years had sent propaganda leaflets via balloons. Others contained cheap medicines and painkillers such as paracetamol.
South Korea’s military is “closely monitoring North Korean movements,” the country’s Defense Minister Shin Won-sik told Japanese newspaper Yomiuiri in an interview published Wednesday.
He added that it was possible that “North Korea’s military could fire at the balloons sent by South Korean activists or at the source where the balloons are launched.”
However, the likelihood of Pyongyang’s military detecting the exact time and location of the South Korean balloons was low, the Defense Ministry told NBC News.
North Korea released another round of balloons on Sunday, which South Korea called vulgar and shameful. He responded by shouting K-Pop through speakers Across the border.
“We are broadcasting K-Pop, happy lifestyle [in South Korea], the development of South Korea and so on through the loudspeaker to North Korea,” the Seoul Joint Chiefs of Staff said at a briefing on Tuesday. Separately, his spokesman, Lee Sung-Joon, said they expected these broadcasts to provoke internal unrest and encourage more defections from North Korea.
The broadcasts were the first of their kind in more than a month and previously included K-pop songs, weather forecasts, news about Samsung, South Korea’s biggest company, as well as criticism of North Korea’s missile program.
Although the balloon landed far from the main presidential office, it was the first to land at the presidential complex, raising security concerns at important buildings. Authorities have not said whether the balloon was guided manually, but the Joint Chiefs of Staff said it was carried by westerly winds.
South Korea warned people not to touch objects contained in garbage bags.
Shin, South Korea’s defense minister, said Pyongyang “may also respond by burying land mines, disseminating propaganda leaflets using drones, disrupting GPS, cyberattacks and so on.”
His comments came as Belarusian Foreign Minister Maxim Ryzhenkov arrived in the North Korean capital on Tuesday.
Both countries are allies of Russia, which has become more diplomatically isolated since launching the invasion of Ukraine two years ago.
North Korea wants to strengthen ties with Belarus to “open a new era”, state media KCNA quoted Foreign Minister Choe Son Hui as saying on Wednesday, a day after the meeting.
His visit comes after Russian President Vladimir Putin made a statement rare state visit to Kim last month, where the two signed a mutual defense treaty.
Tensions between the Koreas have been escalating for months, with Kim accelerating weapons tests and North Korean soldiers repeatedly crossing the border briefly, prompting warning shots.
Earlier this month, North Korean President Kim Jong Un’s sister, Kim Yo Jang, criticized South Korea for “dirty leaflets” that were found at the border and other areas of North Korea, hinting at the eventual resumption of launches. of balloons.
Satellite images also showed North Korea building a wall-like structure along parts of the North Korean side of the demarcation zone (DMZ), which is a 4 km thick buffer zone, half on each side of the border line.
Earlier this year, Kim completely suspended the military agreements agreed between the two nations in 2018. In addition to sending the balloons, he also restored border posts.
South Korea has resumed aerial surveillance near the border, which it said was in retaliation for North Korea’s satellite launch in November.
Stella Kim reported from Seoul and Mithil Aggarwal from Hong Kong.
This article was originally published in NBCNews. with
