Seoul slams Pyongyang's latest provocation: over 900 trash-filled balloons launched

Sept. 7, 2024, 6:49 a.m.

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North Korea has floated hundreds more trash-filled balloons southward, Seoul’s military said Saturday, the latest salvo in the two countries’ tit-for-tat campaigns of provocation and propaganda.

North Korea has launched more than 900 trash balloons over the past three days, including about 190 late Friday, around 100 of which have already landed, mainly in Seoul and northern Gyeonggi province, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said.

The bags attached to the balloons contained “mostly paper and plastic waste”, the military said, adding they posed no safety risk to the public.

Advertisement Since May, North Korea has dispatched close to 5,000 balloons filled with garbage southward, claiming this as retaliation for propaganda balloons sent northward by South Korean activists.

In response, Seoul has suspended a military agreement with Pyongyang aimed at reducing tensions and resumed some propaganda broadcasts from loudspeakers along the border.

Leif-Eric Easley, an academic at Ewha University in Seoul, described the balloon bombardments as an ineffective propaganda strategy for North Korea.

Kim Yo-jong, leader Kim Jong Un’s sister and a key regime spokesperson, “may think that trash balloons exacerbate political divisions in South Korea, but they do more to tarnish North Korea’s international image”, Easley said.

Residents of the South, however, are “annoyed by the requisite clean-up operations and worry about potential escalation”, he added.

“The most reasonable way out of the current impasse is for Pyongyang to restart diplomacy with Seoul, contingent on South Korean civic groups voluntarily abstaining from balloon launches.”

The most recent launches took place as Japan’s outgoing Prime Minister Fumio Kishida was in Seoul for a two-day visit, meeting with South Korean leader Yoon Suk Yeol on Friday.

The two discussed the importance of “cooperation between Korea and Japan and also with the United States, to respond to the North Korean nuclear issue”.

Tensions between the two Koreas have reached a critical point, with North Korea's recent announcement of the deployment of 250 ballistic missile launchers near the southern border.

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