North Korea announced last night that it will “temporarily stop” sending balloons full of waste to South Korea. North Korean Deputy Defense Minister Kim Kang-il said that with this action the North wanted ” let South Koreans experience how unpleasant it is to clean up waste”, as reported by the official news agency “Korean Central News Agency” (“KCNA”). Kim described the North’s filth-laden balloon launches as a “countermeasure” to the leafleting activities of North Korean defectors and human rights groups from South Korean territory. The vice minister stated that North Korea will resume sending balloons across the inter-Korean border if the South resumes leafleting activities against Pyongyang, and warned that in that case the amount of waste and balloons sent to the South would be “a hundredfold” greater than the material received.
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Last week, North Korea sent hundreds of hot air balloons loaded with trash, feces and manure across the border into South Korea. The balloons began crossing the border between the two Koreas on the evening of May 28, only to fall along with their cargo in various locations across the country, even reaching the southeastern province of South Gyeongsang. Photos published by South Korean media show bags full of assorted rubbish carried by balloons and dragged southwards by atmospheric currents, and others crashed into several population centers in Chungcheong province. “We call on North Korea to immediately cease its inhumane and vulgar actions,” the Joint Chiefs of Staff Command in Seoul said in a statement. North Korea’s actions “constitute a clear violation of international law, and seriously threaten the safety of our citizens”, continues the note from the South Korean command.
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The official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) claimed responsibility for the action on behalf of the North Korean authorities, calling it a retaliation against South Korean activists who usually send propaganda and audiovisual materials, food and medicines to North Korea using its own balloons. South Korea banned these types of initiatives in 2020 in response to increasingly harsh and threatening reactions from the North Korean government, but the actions of South Korean democracy activists have continued in recent years. “The dispersal of leaflets via balloons is a dangerous provocation that can be used for a specific military purpose,” Kim Kang-il, North Korea’s vice minister of national defense, said on Sunday. The official had accused South Korea of resorting to “psychological warfare” measures by scattering “rubbish” in border areas, and warned that the North intended to respond “according to the law of retaliation.”
