North Korea has launched more trash-carrying balloons toward the South after a similar campaign earlier this week, according to South Korea’s military, in what Pyongyang claims is reprisal for activists floating anti-North Korean leaflets across the border.
The military warned civilians to be cautious of falling objects and not to handle objects suspected of being from North Korea, but to report them to military or police offices instead.
The administration of Seoul, the capital, said it sent out warnings informing residents that the military was responding to mysterious objects that were allegedly being flown from North Korea and that they had been spotted in the skies close to the city.
The North’s balloon launches were part of a recent flurry of provocative actions, including the unsuccessful launch of a spy satellite and a flurry of short-range missile launches this week, which the North claimed was meant to show off its capabilities to attack the South in advance.
South Korea’s military dispatched chemical rapid response and explosive clearance teams to recover the debris from some 260 North Korean balloons that were found in various parts of the country from Tuesday night to Wednesday.
The military said the balloons carried various types of trash and manure but no dangerous substances like chemical, biological or radioactive materials.
In a statement on Wednesday, Kim Yo Jong, the powerful sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, confirmed that the North sent the balloons to make good on her country’s recent threat to “scatter mounds of wastepaper and filth” in South Korea in response to leafleting campaigns by South Korean activists.
North Korea is particularly sensitive to any outside attempt to undermine Kim Jong Un’s total authority over the country’s 26 million citizens, the majority of whom have limited access to foreign news.
In 2020, North Korea blew up a vacant South Korean-built liaison office on its territory in retaliation for South Korean civilian leafleting activities. In 2014, North Korea fired at propaganda balloons floating approaching its territory, and South Korea answered back, but no one was hurt.
In 2022, North Korea even claimed that balloons flown by South Korea caused a Covid-19 outbreak in the isolated country, a highly dubious claim that appeared to be an attempt to blame the South for deteriorating inter-Korean ties.
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