North Korean garbage balloons dump ‘dirt’ on South Korea

(CNN) — North Korea has adopted a new tactic to confront its southern neighbor: sending floating garbage bags containing “dirt” across the border, carried on giant balloons.

The South Korean military reported the arrival of a “large number of balloons” from the North since Tuesday night, with more than 150 detected by Wednesday morning, according to the country’s Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS).

Photos released by the JCS showed plastic bags being carried in two huge balloons, with some torn packages leaving pieces of plastic, sheets of paper and dirt scattered across streets and sidewalks.

So far, the balloons contain “dirt and debris” and are being analyzed by government agencies, the JCS said, adding that the military is cooperating with the United Nations Command.

“North Korea’s actions are a clear violation of international law and pose a serious threat to the safety of our citizens,” he said. “All responsibility arising from the North Korean balloons rests entirely with North Korea, and we strongly warn North Korea to immediately cease its vile and inhumane actions.”

Local governments also sent messages to residents of the northern provinces of Gyeonggi and Gangwon warning them about “unknown objects” and advising against outdoor activities. The JCS said the packages threatened to damage residential areas, airports and roads.

According to North Korean state media KCNA, the move was meant to retaliate against South Korean activists who often send banned South Korean news and television dramas, including propaganda leaflets, food, medicine, radios and USB flash drives, to the north of the country, an isolated totalitarian dictatorship.

Activists in the South, including North Korean defectors, have long sent these materials into rivers via balloons, drones and floating bottles, even after South Korea’s parliament banned such actions in 2020.

“Spreading leaflets using balloons is a dangerous provocation that can be used for a specific military purpose,” North Korea’s Deputy National Defense Minister Kim Kang Il said, KCNA reported on Sunday.

He accused South Korea of ​​using “psychological warfare” by spreading “various dirty things” near border areas, and declared that the North would take “tit for tat” steps.

“Heaps of used paper and garbage will soon be scattered across (South Korea’s) border areas and interior, and it will be experienced firsthand how much effort is needed to eliminate them,” Kim said, according to KCNA. “We will take immediate action when our sovereignty, security and national interests are violated.”

Kim also condemned joint military exercises between the United States and South Korea, which have increased in recent years as tensions have risen on the Korean Peninsula.

The 2020 law banning the leaflets also restricted loudspeaker propaganda broadcasts, which the South’s military once championed as part of psychological warfare against the North until it withdrew the equipment after a summit between the two Koreas in 2018.

But even after parliament passed the ban, activists told Reuters they planned to keep doing it, including defector Park Sang-hak, who had been sending material to his homeland for 15 years, and vowed to continue in an effort to give North Koreans a rare view from the outside world.

Earlier this month, Park’s organisation, Fighters for a Free North Korea, said in a statement that it had sent 20 balloons to North Korea carrying 300,000 leaflets denouncing Kim Jong Un and 2,000 USB flash drives containing K-pop and music videos.

“To appeal and urge the North Korean people to rise up and eliminate Kim Jong Un… the group is sending leaflets to compatriots in North Korea,” the organization said in a statement.

North Korean teenagers sentenced to hard labor for watching South Korean dramas.

For decades, North Korea has been almost completely isolated from the rest of the world, with strict controls on information coming in or going out. Foreign material, including films and books, is restricted, with only a few state-sanctioned exceptions; defectors say those caught with foreign contraband often face severe punishment.

Earlier this year, a South Korean investigation group released rare images it claimed showed North Korean teenagers sentenced to hard labor for watching and distributing K-dramas.

Restrictions have been loosened somewhat in recent decades as North Korea’s ties with China have expanded. Temporary opening measures have also allowed some South Korean elements, including parts of its pop culture, to enter the hermit nation, particularly in 2017 and 2018, when relations between the two countries thawed.

But in the following years the situation in North Korea deteriorated and diplomatic talks failed, leading to a return to strict rules in the North.