- South Korea has warned it will resume anti-North Korea propaganda broadcasts after North Korea resumed launching balloons carrying garbage across the border.
- North Korea has launched balloons loaded with plastic bags full of trash in retaliation for South Korean activists dropping political leaflets.
- South Korea’s military reported that North Korea had launched about 350 balloons, about 100 of which landed in Seoul and the surrounding area.
South Korea warned on Tuesday it would resume anti-Pyongyang frontline propaganda broadcasts after North Korea resumed launching garbage-carrying balloons, in the latest campaign reminiscent of Cold War-era inter-Korean conflict.
North Korea launched giant balloons loaded with plastic garbage bags across the border on Monday night, the fifth such campaign since late May and an apparent response to South Korean activists using balloons to drop political leaflets.
South Korean President Yun Seok-yeo called North Korea’s balloon activities a “despicable and irrational provocation” in a speech on Tuesday marking the first anniversary of the Korean War. He said South Korea would maintain robust military readiness to repel any provocations by the North.
South Korea remains on alert for further North Korean trash balloons after declaring retaliation
Later that day, Yoon boarded a visiting U.S. aircraft carrier docked in a southeastern port and told U.S. and South Korean troops that their alliance was the strongest in the world and capable of defeating any foe, becoming the first sitting South Korean president to do so since 1994.
South Korean President Yun Seok-yeol (center right) and his wife Kim Kun-hee wave the national flag during a ceremony commemorating the 74th anniversary of the outbreak of the Korean War in Daegu, South Korea, on June 25, 2024. (AP Photo/Ahn Yong-jun, Pool)
According to South Korea’s military, North Korea launched about 350 balloons in recent operations, with about 100 of them ultimately landing on South Korean territory, mostly in or near Seoul, which is about 25 to 30 miles from the border. The military said the trash carried by the North Korean balloons was mostly paper, and no dangerous materials were found.
North Korea has previously sent balloons into various parts of South Korea, dropping fertilizer, cigarette butts, discarded batteries, along with scraps of cloth and waste paper. No major damage has been reported. In response, South Korea redeployed giant loudspeakers along the border for the first time in six years on June 9 and temporarily resumed broadcasting anti-North Korean propaganda.
Joint Chiefs of Staff spokesman Lee Seong-jun told reporters on Tuesday that South Korean forces were prepared to activate loudspeakers on the border again. A written statement from the Joint Chiefs of Staff said officials would review unspecified strategic and operational circumstances and that the resumption of broadcasts would depend on North Korean actions.
On June 10, 2024, balloons believed to have been sent from North Korea are seen in a rice field in Incheon, South Korea. (Lim Seong-seok/Associated Press via Yonhap News Agency, File)
Balloon launches and loudspeaker broadcasts were a favorite form of psychological tactic between the two Koreas during the Cold War, and although the two sides agreed to end such activities in recent years, they have occasionally resumed during renewed hostilities.
North Korea, which officially bans most of its 26 million people from accessing foreign news, is highly sensitive to South Korean border broadcasts and civilian leafleting campaigns.
A leafleting campaign in South Korea by civilian activists, most of whom are defectors, has included leaflets criticizing North Korea’s human rights abuses and USB sticks with South Korean TV dramas, while past South Korean border broadcasts have included K-pop songs, weather forecasts and outside news. In a statement on Friday, Kim Yo Jong, a strongman under Kim Jong Un, called them “human scum” and “nasty defectors.”
South Korean authorities say they have not restricted activists from dropping leaflets on North Korea following a 2023 Constitutional Court ruling that invalidated a law that criminalised leaflet-dropping as a violation of freedom of speech.
A visitor looks out over North Korea from the Unification Observatory in Paju, South Korea, on June 25, 2024. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)
Many experts say North Korea’s balloon campaign is also likely aimed at deepening debate in South Korea over the distribution of civilian leaflets and sparking broader internal divisions.
Concerns over North Korea intensified in mid-June when North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and Russian President Vladimir Putin signed an agreement that obligated the two countries to provide assistance in case of attack and vowed to strengthen other cooperation, a pact that observers said represented the strongest ties between the two countries since the end of the Cold War.
The United States and its allies believe North Korea is providing Russia with conventional weapons needed for the war in Ukraine in return for military and economic aid.
In a speech on the Korean War, Yoon described the agreement between Kim Jong Un and Putin as an “anachronism.” South Korea, the United States and Japan issued a joint statement on Monday strongly condemning growing military cooperation between Russia and North Korea.
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South Korean officials said the arrival of the USS Theodore Roosevelt and its strike group was aimed at countering North Korea’s nuclear threat and growing military ties with Russia. The deployment of the ship is also part of a 2023 US-ROK agreement aimed at increasing “constant visibility” of US strategic assets on the Korean peninsula.
Yoon said the U.S. aircraft carrier will leave a South Korean port on Wednesday to take part in a new trilateral exercise between South Korea, the United States and Japan. The new multi-domain exercise, called “Freedom Edge,” aims to strengthen cooperation among the three countries in various operational domains, including air, sea and cyberspace.
North Korea has previously responded to large-scale U.S.-led drills with missile tests, and North Korea’s Vice Defense Minister Kim Kang Il on Monday called the deployment of the U.S. aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt a “reckless choice and action by the United States.”
