South Korea on alert for more trash balloons from the North
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Military personnel collecting the debris of balloons sent by North Korea in Incheon, west of Seoul, South Korea, on June 2.
PHOTO: EPA-EFE
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SEOUL – South Korea’s military said it was on alert for more trash-carrying balloons possibly arriving from North Korea on June 9.
In two waves the week before, North Korea sent hundreds of balloons with bags of trash
Pyongyang announced a halt to the balloons on June 2 but days later, a South Korean group called Fighters for Free North Korea said it had sent 10 balloons
The South Korean military is “closely monitoring with vigilance” because of “the possibility of more trash balloons descending around tomorrow”, its spokesperson told AFP on June 8.
North Korea had said it would respond with “wastepaper and rubbish” 100 times the amount if more South Korean leaflets were sent.
The North Korean balloons last week landed in a number of locations in the South, and were found to be carrying rubbish such as cigarette butts, cardboard scrap and waste batteries.
In response to the balloons, South Korea on Tuesday completely suspended a 2018 military deal with the North,
The authorities in Seoul have condemned the North Korean balloons as a “low-class” act and threatened countermeasures that it said Pyongyang would find “unendurable”.
Duelling propaganda
Activists in South Korea have long sent balloons northwards, filled with anti-Pyongyang propaganda, cash, rice and Korean TV series on USB thumb drives.
These have always infuriated North Korea, whose government is extremely sensitive about its people gaining access to South Korean pop culture.
Kuensaem, another South Korean activist group, told AFP that it threw 500 plastic bottles into the sea on June 7 near the border with North Korea.
The bottles were filled with rice, cash and a USB drive with the South Korean 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 doing this twice a month since 2015.
The contents of balloons sent to the North by Fighters for Free North Korea, which includes USB flash drives containing South Korean pop music and TV shows, as well as thousands of US one-dollar bills.
PHOTO: AFP
“We were just doing what we’ve been doing for a long time to help North Koreans who are starving,” the group’s leader, Mr Park Jung-oh, told AFP on June 8.
Tensions over the duelling propaganda have boiled over in dramatic fashion in the past.
In 2020, blaming the anti-North leaflets, Pyongyang unilaterally cut off all official military and political communication links with Seoul and blew up a disused inter-Korean liaison office on its side of the border.
In 2023, South Korea’s Constitutional Court struck down a 2020 law that criminalised the sending of anti-Pyongyang propaganda, calling it an undue limitation on free speech.
Mr Kim Jong Un’s powerful sister, Ms Kim Yo Jong, mocked South Korea for complaining about the balloons last week, saying North Koreans were simply exercising their freedom of expression. AFP
