As retaliation for Pyongyang’s launch of hundreds of balloons filled with waste, South Korea will completely suspend a military agreement concluded in 2018 with North Korea and intended to limit tensions between the two countries, announced Monday June 3 the National Security Council in Seoul.
Seoul had already partially suspended the agreement last year following Pyongyang’s orbiting of a spy satellite, but the National Security Council said it would ask the cabinet to “suspend completely” this military agreement “until mutual trust between the two Koreas is restored”.
Over the past week, nearly a thousand balloons filled with waste, ranging from cigarette butts to animal excrement, have been launched by North Korea towards its neighbor, including six hundred on Sunday, according to Seoul. Pyongyang claimed that these “sincere gifts” aimed to respond to the sending into its territory of balloons loaded with propaganda leaflets against leader Kim Jong-un. South Korea called this North Korean action “low grade” and D’“irrational”.
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However, unlike the recent ballistic missile launches, this action does not violate the sanctions imposed by the United Nations (UN) on the North Korean regime which committed to ” to suspend “ temporarily these balloon releases by ensuring that this ” countermeasure “ had been effective.
A “virtually void” agreement
The 2018 military agreement – signed during a period of warming relations between the two countries, which remain technically at war, and partially suspended by Seoul in November 2023 – aims to reduce tensions on the peninsula particularly along the inter-Korean border. highly secure. The North then said it would no longer honor him at all.
As a result, the National Security Council in Seoul declared that the agreement was “virtually null and void due to North Korea’s de facto declaration of abandonment”, but that compliance with the rest of the agreement put Seoul at a disadvantage in terms of its ability to respond to threats such as balloons. Respect the agreement “poses significant challenges to the readiness of our armed forces, particularly in the context of a series of recent provocations by North Korea that are causing real harm and threatening our citizens”the South Korean government said.
This decision will allow “military training in areas around the military demarcation line” And “more adequate and more immediate responses to North Korean provocations”. The decision will need to be approved at a cabinet meeting scheduled for Tuesday before taking effect.
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