More than 260 balloons have been found across South Korea since Wednesday, including in the Seoul metropolitan area, with balloon waste consisting of compost, cigarette butts, waste batteries, and waste cloth, the South Korean military said.
South Korea’s joint chiefs of staff condemned the balloons as a breach of the July 1953 Korean war armistice.
“We respectfully ask the South Korean government for understanding”, she said in a statement that seemed to be laced with sarcasm and irony.
Balloons have regularly been sent the other way by South Korean activists, often led by North Korean defectors, containing leaflets with messages critical of Pyongyang and stirring tension between the neighbours, including incidents when the North reportedly tried to shoot them down.
It fired at such balloons from the South in 2014, sparking a machine-gun fire exchange that raised safety concerns among people living near the heavily-armed border. No one was hurt in the exchange.
Cho Han-bum, a senior research fellow at the state-run Korea Institute for National Unification, said the North sees such leaflets an “intolerable insult to the Kim family and a serious threat” to the legitimacy of its regime.
“But the filth-throwing is only solidifying the North’s image as a pariah state and highlights its lack of confidence in the stability of its regime”, Cho said.
“A tit-for-tat will continue with no end in sight.”
02:11
South Korea kicks up a stink about faeces-filled balloons from the North
South Korea kicks up a stink about faeces-filled balloons from the North
Lim Eul-chul, an associate professor and director of the ICNK Center at the Institute for Far Eastern Studies at Kyungnam University, said North Korea’s leaflet launch this week was much greater in scale and spread wider than in the past, reflecting technology development.
“This is a very dangerous move that could go out of control as the North could create chaos in the South by launching balloons loaded with germs”, he said.
“North Korea’s unruly behaviour is a constant that has always been there, but the key is how to manage the situation safely”, Lim said.
“Everyone endorses freedom of expression, but the South has no means to stop the North’s balloon launches. It has no alternatives but to persuade activists of the risks to people’s safety stemming from their leaflet launches.”
Additional reporting by Reuters