North Korea again sent hundreds of garbage balloons toward South Korea and warned Monday it would retaliate if Seoul continued its “psychological warfare.”
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Relations between the two Koreas are going through one of the most difficult times in years.
Pyongyang has in recent weeks sent hundreds of balloons weighted with trash such as cigarette butts, toilet paper, and even animal feces to its southern neighbor, in what it describes as a response to the dissemination of propaganda, in particular by leaflets or USB keys, against the North Korean regime by South Korean activists.
According to the South Korean army, a large part of the garbage balloons sent overnight from Sunday to Monday encountered headwinds.
“Although they launched more than 310 balloons, many of them flew toward North Korea,” the Joint Chiefs of Staff said, adding that about 50 balloons had landed in the South until now. now.
The latest batch of garbage-laden balloons contained waste paper and plastic, without any toxic materials, the staff said.
Kim’s sister and top government spokeswoman, Kim Yo Jong, warned that South Korea would “suffer bitter humiliation by constantly collecting waste paper and that it would be a daily task,” in a statement released early Monday morning.
She called the South Korean activists’ leaflets “psychological warfare” and threatened Seoul with retaliation if its campaigns did not stop, according to a statement cited by the official KCNA news agency.
If Seoul “simultaneously disperses leaflets and broadcasts provocations across the border, it will undoubtedly witness the North’s new response,” she added.
“So far, we have not noticed any particular movement within the North Korean army,” said a South Korean general staff official, estimating the level of threat expressed by the declarations of Kim Yo Jong different from what he was in the past.
But even in this case, “the Seoul army will respond sufficiently to any new response” from North Korea, he added.
“Flour”• Also read: Seoul resumes propaganda through loudspeakers
The statements by Kim’s sister show that “North Korea is raising its voice to blame South Korea for the current situation and to justify its provocations,” Kim Dong-yub, a professor at the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul.
It is likely that the escalation will continue and that “North Korea will do something beyond our imagination,” he suggested.
The North Koreans could do “something creative like throwing flour, causing absolute panic in the South, which will make them happy,” he said, with such an attack potentially triggering fears of a biological attack in South Korea.
The balloon launches on both sides of the border began when activists from the South, including North Korean defectors, sent north dozens of balloons containing propaganda against Kim Jong Un’s regime and USB sticks containing K-pop music.
In response, Pyongyang sent more than a thousand balloons, some containing bags of garbage, which Seoul says violates the armistice agreement that ended hostilities in the 1950 Korean War. 1953.
In 2018, during a lull in relations, the leaders of the two Koreas agreed to “completely cease all hostile acts,” including leafleting and propaganda broadcasts.
The South Korean parliament tried to block the activists’ action by passing a law in 2020 that punishes the sending of leaflets to the North, but the activists did not stop and the law was invalidated by the Constitutional Court on last year on the grounds that it unduly limited freedom of expression.
The total suspension of the 2018 agreement allows Seoul to resume live-fire exercises and relaunch propaganda campaigns against the North’s regime via loudspeakers along the border.
According to Leif-Eric Easley, a professor at Ewha University in Seoul, both sides now face a risky situation.
“Seoul does not want military tensions on the inter-Korean border and Pyongyang does not want external information to threaten the legitimacy of the Kim regime,” he notes.
“North Korea may have already miscalculated, because South Korean democracy cannot simply block NGO balloon launches like an autocracy could.”
