North Korea sent some 600 balloons carrying rubbish into South Korea overnight, Seoul said on Sunday, in Pyongyang’s latest move to rile its rival neighbour.
The balloons carrying garbage such as cigarette butts, cloth, paper waste and plastic were found across the capital from 8pm on Saturday to 10am Sunday, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said.
It said the military was monitoring the starting point and conducting aerial reconnaissance to track down and collect the balloons, which have large bags of rubbish suspended beneath them.
Later on Sunday South Korea’s National security director Chang Ho-jin said the government will soon take “unbearable” retaliatory steps over the launch of the balloons and other provocations.
North Korea on Wednesday sent hundreds of balloons carrying trash and excrement across the heavily fortified border as what it called “gifts of sincerity”. Seoul responded angrily, calling the move base and dangerous.
In the past week, North Korea has also simulated nuclear strikes against its neighbour and allegedly jammed GPS navigation signals in an escalation of animosities between the rivals.
Chang called the balloon campaign and its alleged GPS signal jamming “absurd, irrational acts of provocation that a normal country can’t imagine”. He accused North Korea of aiming to cause “public anxieties and chaos” in South Korea.
South Korea’s Defence Minister Shin Won-sik said during a meeting with US Defence Secretary Austin Lloyd on the sidelines of the Shangri-La security dialogue in Singapore on Sunday that the balloons violated the armistice agreement, according to South Korea’s military.
The two reaffirmed a coordinated response to any North Korean threats and provocations based on the South Korea-US alliance’s combined defence posture, it added.
Emergency alerts were issued in North Gyeongsang and Gangwon provinces and some parts of Seoul on Sunday, urging people not to come into contact with the balloons and to alert police.
North Korea said its balloon floating was in reaction to South Korean activists flying anti-Pyongyang propaganda leaflets via their own balloons across the border.
South Korean officials did not say what retaliatory steps they would take. But many observers say South Korea is likely to resume frontline loudspeaker broadcasts into North Korea that include criticism of its abysmal human rights situation, world news and K-pop songs.
North Korea is extremely sensitive to such broadcasts because most of its 26 million people have no official access to foreign TV and radio programmes.
South Korea stopped blaring propaganda across the border in 2018 after a rare summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.
Additional reporting by Associated Press
