SEOUL (AFP) – More trash-filled balloons from North Korea are expected to arrive in the South from today, Seoul’s military said, days after Pyongyang began its campaign to punish its neighbour.
North Korea had sent around 260 balloons carrying bags of trash – including waste batteries, cigarette butts and what appeared to be manure – from Tuesday night to Wednesday, according to an Seoul’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, who 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 today, “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 official said yesterday.
“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 and to report them to authorities.
North Korea also attempted to jam GPS signals for a third consecutive day yesterday, but it did not hinder any military operations in the South, Seoul’s military said.
The North attempted on Monday to put a second spy satellite into orbit, which ended in a failure.
That attempt came just hours after South Korea, Japan and China 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.
In 2018, the leaders of the two Koreas agreed to “completely cease all hostile acts against each other in every domain, including land, air and sea”.including “distribution of leaflets”.
The South Korean 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.
Last year, 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.
