- According to South Korea, North Korea has once again sent numerous balloons containing plastic bags full of garbage across the border between the two countries.
- In the last two days, about 330 “garbage balloons” have risen from North Korea, the General Staff in the capital Seoul said.
- South Korea announced that it would therefore again bombard its northern neighbor with loudspeaker announcements.
Of the 330 balloons, more than 80 landed on South Korean territory. The rest probably did not reach their target, South Korea said.
The bags attached to the plane contained waste paper and plastic, among other things. Initial investigations showed that they did not contain any dangerous substances. People were nevertheless asked not to touch the landed objects.
North Korea’s balloon campaigns are a reaction to similar activities by South Korean groups. They repeatedly send thousands of leaflets and other propaganda material across the border using huge gas balloons. In the leaflets, they criticize the authoritarian leadership of the isolated neighboring country.
According to South Korean media reports, two different groups carried out such leaflet campaigns on Thursday and Friday. Pyongyang is usually sensitive to propaganda from outside and accuses the government in Seoul of supporting such balloon campaigns by private groups. Since the end of May, North Korea has sent more than a thousand balloons filled with waste products and some with liquid manure to South Korea.
South Korea reactivates propaganda broadcasts
In view of the growing tensions on the Korean peninsula, South Korea’s government recently decided to suspend a 2018 military agreement with North Korea on confidence-building measures at the border. This paved the way, among other things, for the resumption of military exercises near the military demarcation line, but also for possible propaganda broadcasts from loudspeakers towards the north.
Legend:
After the propaganda broadcasts were stopped in 2004, South Korea temporarily restarted the loudspeakers in 2010 (picture).
Keystone / LEE SANG-HAK
Shortly afterwards, the National Security Council in Seoul announced that it would once again broadcast loudspeaker announcements to its northern neighbor. The loudspeaker systems are stacked along the border and point north. In the past, South Korea broadcast news and Korean-language pop music at such a high volume that they could presumably be heard 20 kilometers away.
Loudspeaker broadcasts are one of the methods of psychological warfare. South Korea stopped the measure after it signed an agreement with North Korea in 2018 to ease relations. But the pact is now effectively on hold after North Korea pushed ahead with its missile program and declared its southern neighbor “enemy number one.”