SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korea has launched hundreds more balloons carrying trash toward South Korea. Similar Campaigns South Korea’s military said anti-North Korea demonstrations had taken place in Pyongyang just days earlier in retaliation for activists who had distributed anti-North Korea leaflets across the border.
About 600 balloons sent from North Korea were found across South Korea between Saturday night and Sunday morning. The balloons were loaded with cigarette butts, rags, waste paper and plastic, but did not contain any dangerous materials, the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff said Sunday.
The military urged people to be on the lookout for falling objects, not to touch anything suspected to be from North Korea, and to report the incident to the military or police. No injuries or damage have been reported.
The Seoul metropolitan government sent out a text alert saying an unidentified object believed to have come from North Korea had been spotted in the skies near the city and that the military was responding.
North Korean balloon launch In addition to a series of recent provocative measures, Spy Satellite Firing and barrages Short-range missiles North Korea said the attack was intended to demonstrate its capabilities. Launch a preemptive strike.
The South Korean military deployed chemical rapid response and explosive ordnance removal teams to retrieve the remains of about 260 North Korean balloons found across the country between Tuesday night and Wednesday. The military said the balloons were loaded with various types of garbage and fertilizer, but no chemical, biological or radioactive hazardous materials. Some of the balloons had timers attached, suggesting they were designed to burst garbage bags in mid-air.
Kim Yo Jong, the younger sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, confirmed in a statement on Wednesday that North Korea had sent the balloons to make good on its recent threat to “scatter large amounts of waste paper and filth” in South Korea in retaliation for a leaflet-distributing campaign by South Korean activists.
She suggested balloons could become North Korea’s standard response to leafleting in the future, saying it would respond by “dropping dozens of times more garbage than what they drop on us.”
South Korea’s Unification Ministry said Friday that North Korea must stop its provocative actions, including missile launches and other actions, or face unspecified but “unbearable” consequences.
South Korea’s military said it had no plans to shoot down the balloons, citing concerns they could cause damage or contain dangerous materials, and that shooting down balloons near the border at a time of heightened tensions would risk provoking retaliation from North Korea.
“(We) decided it would be best to drop the balloon and retrieve it safely,” Lee Seong-jun, spokesman for South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at a press conference on Thursday.
North Korea is extremely sensitive to any outside attempts to weaken Kim Jong Un’s absolute control over his 26 million people, most of whom have little access to foreign news.
In 2020, North Korea was so enraged by a South Korean leaflet-distributing campaign that it blew up an unmanned liaison office built by South Korea on its territory. In 2014, North Korea opened fire on propaganda balloons flying towards its territory, and South Korea fired back, but there were no casualties.
In 2022, North Korea even suggested that balloons sent from South Korea caused a COVID-19 outbreak in the isolated country, a highly dubious claim aimed at blaming South Korea for the deterioration of inter-Korean relations.
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Associated Press writer Kim Hyun-jin contributed to this report.
