N. Korea sends hundreds more trash balloons south: Seoul

SEOUL: North Korea has floated hundreds more trash-filled balloons southward, Seoul’s military said Saturday, the latest salvo in the two countries’ tit-for-tat campaigns of provocation and propaganda.

North Korea has launched more than 900 trash balloons over the past three days, including about 190 late Friday, around 100 of which have already landed, mainly in Seoul and northern Gyeonggi province, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said.

The bags attached to the balloons contained “mostly paper and plastic waste”, the military said, adding they posed no safety risk to the public.

North Korea has sent nearly 5,000 trash-filled balloons south since May, saying they are retaliation for propaganda balloons launched northwards by South Korean activists.

In response, Seoul has suspended a tension-reducing military deal with Pyongyang and restarted some propaganda broadcasts from loudspeakers along the border.

Leif-Eric Easley, a professor at Ewha University in Seoul, said the balloon barrages were an ineffective propaganda ploy for North Korea.

Kim Yo-jong, leader Kim Jong Un’s sister and a key regime spokesperson, “may think that trash balloons exacerbate political divisions in South Korea, but they do more to tarnish North Korea’s international image”, Easley said.

Residents of the South, however, are “annoyed by the requisite clean-up operations and worry about potential escalation”, he added.

“The most reasonable way out of the current impasse is for Pyongyang to restart diplomacy with Seoul, contingent on South Korean civic groups voluntarily abstaining from balloon launches.”

The most recent launches took place as Japan’s outgoing Prime Minister Fumio Kishida was in Seoul for a two-day visit, meeting with South Korean leader Yoon Suk Yeol on Friday.

The two discussed the importance of “cooperation between Korea and Japan and also with the United States, to respond to the North Korean nuclear issue”.

Relations between the two Koreas are at one of their lowest points in years, with the North recently announcing the deployment of 250 ballistic missile launchers to its southern border.