South Korea said on Monday it was suspending a reconciliation agreement with North Korea to punish the country, despite the North announcing it would stop launching garbage-carrying balloons.
North Korea has launched hundreds of balloons and dropped garbage and fertilizer into South Korea over several days in an angry response to previous leafleting campaigns by South Korean civilians.
On Sunday, South Korea said it would take “unbearable” retaliatory measures, while North Korea suddenly announced it would stop flying balloons over the border.
South Korea’s presidential National Security Council said on Monday it had decided to suspend a 2018 inter-Korean agreement aimed at easing hostility on the frontline between the two Koreas until mutual trust between the two Koreas is restored, according to the presidential office.
The Security Council said the suspension would allow South Korea to resume military drills near the border with North Korea and provide an effective and immediate response to any provocations by the North.
The ministry said the proposal regarding the suspension will be submitted for approval at the Cabinet meeting on Tuesday.
Observers say a suspension of the agreement is necessary for South Korea to resume blasting anti-Pyongyang propaganda broadcasts, K-pop songs and outside news from loudspeakers on the border.
Such broadcasts have long been a sore spot in tightly controlled North Korea, where most of the 26 million people are not officially allowed to access foreign news, they say.
The 2018 agreement, forged during a brief period of rapprochement between then-liberal South Korean President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, requires the two Koreas to cease all hostile acts against each other, including propaganda broadcasts and leaflet distribution campaigns.
However, the agreement does not explicitly state that the distribution of leaflets by civilians should also be banned.
This allows South Korean activists to continue sending balloons to drop anti-Pyongyang leaflets, USB sticks containing Korean dramas and world news, and US dollars into North Korea.
North Korea has been infuriated by such leafleting tactics, and has previously fired at approaching balloons and destroyed an unmanned inter-Korean liaison office built by South Korea in North Korea.
The 2018 agreement is already in danger of falling apart.
Tensions have risen since North Korea launched a spy satellite in November last year, with both Koreas taking steps to violate the agreement, with South Korea resuming frontline aerial surveillance and North Korea restoring border patrol posts.
Around 1,000 North Korean balloons loaded with fertilizer, cigarette butts, scraps of cloth and waste paper have been found across South Korea since last Tuesday.
According to the South Korean military, no hazardous substances were found.
North Korea’s Vice Defense Minister Kim Kang Il said on Sunday night that North Korea would end its balloon operations, saying it had “given South Koreans a full sense of how much discomfort they are causing them.”
He said that if South Korean activists resumed their own balloon flights, North Korea would likely launch balloons again.
Experts say North Korea’s balloon campaign, reportedly the first in seven years, is intended to sow divisions over South Korea’s current conservative government’s hardline policy towards North Korea.
North Korea has dramatically increased its nuclear weapons tests since 2022 in what analysts say is an attempt to bolster its nuclear capabilities and increase its leverage in future diplomacy with the United States.
