Pyongyang continues its provocations. North Korea has sent new balloons suspected of being loaded with waste towards the South, the South Korean army announced on Saturday, August 10, the latest in a series of similar incidents.
North Koreans have launched thousands of balloons filled with garbage toward South Korea since May, saying it was in retaliation for propaganda balloons launched toward their country by South Korean militants. Relations between the two Koreas are at their lowest in years, with the North recently reporting the deployment of 250 ballistic missile launchers on its southern border.
Nuclear-armed North Korea “has again released (suspected) trash balloons toward the South,” the Joint Chiefs of Staff in Seoul said in a statement Saturday. It advised the public to refrain from touching them and to report them to authorities.
Live-fire exercises
Last month, balloons sent by the North Koreans hit the South Korean presidential compound in the capital, prompting the government to mobilize chemical response teams to retrieve them. In response, South Korea has resumed spreading propaganda along the border, completely suspended a military agreement aimed at reducing tensions and resumed live-fire drills on border islands and near the demilitarized zone that divides the Korean Peninsula.
The isolated North is extremely sensitive about its population’s exposure to South Korean pop culture in particular. According to a recent South Korean government report, a man was executed in 2022 for possessing content from the South.
On Thursday, South Korea’s military said a suspected North Korean defected to the South across the de facto maritime border in the Yellow Sea, with some experts suggesting his decision may have been influenced by the South’s resumption of propaganda broadcasts, which include news reports as well as K-pop. The two Koreas remain technically at war because their deadly 1950-53 conflict ended in an armistice, not a peace treaty.