Sending garbage balloons
In recent weeks, Pyongyang has sent hundreds of balloons weighted with trash such as cigarette butts, toilet paper and even animal excrement to South Korea. The North Korean regime intends to respond to the sending towards the north by defector associations, also by balloon, of leaflets hostile to leader Kim Jong Un and his family, American bank notes and USB keys containing k -pop and South Korean series. Seoul cannot legally prevent these shipments.
In early June, the South Korean government completely suspended a 2018 military deal to reduce tensions and resumed broadcasting propaganda over loudspeakers along the border, in retaliation for the garbage balloons. North Korea – which had already thrown the 2018 agreement into oblivion last year – warned Seoul against “a new crisis”.
Intense propaganda duels
According to the South Korean army, the North is also installing loudspeakers on its side of the border, suggesting intense duels of screaming propaganda. These sound duels had been frequent since the 1960s, but were suspended in 2018 due to a warming of relations. The decision to abandon the 2018 agreement and reconnect the speakers could have serious consequences, if precedent is to be believed.
Complaining about the sending of propaganda leaflets against its regime from the South, North Korea in 2020 cut all official military and political communication links with its neighbor, and demolished with explosives an inter-Korean liaison office located on his side of the border. The North has also threatened in the past to fire cannons on South Korean loudspeakers if they are not turned off.
Abandoning the 2018 deal also means the South Korean military can resume live ammunition exercises near the border. This agreement was the result of an inter-Korean rapprochement promoted by the South Korean president at the time, Moon Jae-in, who had met Kim Jong Un several times. In 2020 the South Korean Parliament passed a law banning sending propaganda leaflets to the North. But the Constitutional Court invalidated the text last year, ruling that it violated freedom of expression.
