South Korea military warns of more trash-filled balloons from North

SEOUL – More trash-filled balloons from North Korea are expected to arrive in the South from June 1, Seoul’s military said, days after Pyongyang began its campaign to punish its neighbour.

North Korea

sent around 260 balloons carrying bags of trash

, including waste batteries, cigarette butts and what appeared to be manure, from May 28 to 29, according to Seoul’s Joint Chiefs of Staff that condemned the move as “low class” and inhumane.

Pyongyang has defended the move, saying the “sincere gifts” were retaliation for balloons full of anti-Kim Jong Un regime propaganda sent northwards by activists in the South.

From June 1, “north winds are forecasted, so the release of balloons carrying waste from the North to the South is expected”, an official from the Joint Chiefs of Staff said on May 31.

“We are closely monitoring the movements of the North Korean military and, if such balloons are launched, an announcement will be made to the media,” the official added, advising the public to refrain from touching the balloons if spotted, and to report them to the authorities.

North Korea also attempted to jam GPS signals for a third consecutive day on May 31, but it did not hinder any military operations in the South, Seoul’s military said.

The North attempted on May 27 to put a second spy satellite into orbit,

which ended in a failure

.

That attempt came just hours after South Korea, Japan and China – Pyongyang’s most important ally –

held a rare trilateral summit

, where they called for Pyongyang to give up its nukes.

South Korean activists have long sent balloons filled with anti-Pyongyang propaganda, cash, rice, and USBs containing K-dramas northwards, a move that has always infuriated North Korea.

In 2018, during a period of improved inter-Korean relations, the leaders of the two Koreas agreed to “completely cease all hostile acts against each other in every domain, including land, air and sea”, and the “distribution of leaflets”.

South Korea’s Parliament passed a law in 2020 criminalising the act of sending leaflets to the North.

But activists in the South did not stop and, that same year, Pyongyang, blaming the anti-North leaflets, unilaterally cut off all official military and political communication links and blew up an inter-Korean liaison office on its side of the border.

In 2023, South Korea’s Constitutional Court struck down the 2020 law that criminalised the sending of anti-Pyongyang propaganda leaflets to the North, calling it an undue limitation on free speech.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s powerful sister mocked Seoul for complaining over the trash-filled balloons this week, saying North Koreans were simply exercising their freedom of expression, a rationale Seoul has given in the past for activists’ actions. AFP