North Korea again sent hundreds of garbage balloons toward South Korea and warned Monday it would retaliate if Seoul continued its “psychological warfare.”
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 excrement, to its southern neighbor, in what it describes as a response to the spread 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 number 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 the regime’s top 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 the 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 new response” from the North, she added.
South Korea announced on Sunday the resumption of its loudspeaker propaganda campaigns along the border, which date back to the Korean War (1950-1953). North Korea has also used this practice since the 1960s.
“So far, we have not noticed any particular movement within the North Korean army,” said a South Korean general staff official.
But authorities have “detected signs of North Korea installing loudspeakers” to broadcast to the South at the border, he said.
In any case, “the Seoul army will respond sufficiently to any new response” from North Korea, he added.
” Flour “
The statements by Kim’s sister show that “North Korea is raising its voice to blame South Korea for the current situation and justify its provocations”, notes Kim Dong-yub, professor at the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul.
He considers it likely that the escalation will continue and that “North Korea will do something beyond our imagination.”
The North Koreans could do “something creative like throwing flour, causing absolute panic in the South, which will make them happy,” he says, with such an operation potentially triggering fears of a biological attack in Korea from South.
The rise in tension began when activists from the South, including North Korean defectors, sent to the North dozens of balloons containing propaganda against Kim Jong Un’s regime and USB sticks containing K music. -pop.
In response, Pyongyang sent more than a thousand balloons, which Seoul says violates the armistice agreement that ended hostilities in the Korean War.
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 action of activists by passing a law in 2020 that punishes the sending of leaflets to the North, without result. The law was struck down by the Constitutional Court last year on the grounds that it unduly restricted freedom of expression.
Seoul completely suspended on June 4 the 2018 agreement which banned live-fire exercises and propaganda campaigns against the North’s regime via loudspeakers.
According to Leif-Eric Easley, a professor at Ewha University in Seoul, both sides 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.”