SEOUL – The South Korean military on Friday said it had restarted loudspeaker propaganda broadcasts directed at North Korea in response to Pyongyang sending hundreds of trash-carrying balloons across the border.
Seoul said it detected about 200 trash balloons sent by North Korea from Thursday to Friday, marking the eighth round of such launches by Kim Jong Un’s government since late May.
“We have repeatedly and sternly warned North Korea about their continuous release of trash-carrying balloons,” South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement.
Following the warnings, “our military conducted loudspeaker propaganda broadcasts towards the North” from Thursday evening to Friday morning, it added.
Later Friday, the JCS said it had restarted the broadcasts at 4:00 pm (0700 GMT), and that it would do so “continuously” — without specifying the planned duration of the fresh broadcasts.
The two Koreas remain technically at war because the 1950-53 conflict ended in an armistice, not a peace treaty.
The propaganda broadcasts — a tactic which dates back to the Korean War — infuriate Pyongyang, which previously threatened artillery strikes against Seoul’s loudspeaker units.
North Korea’s balloon launches are “a clear violation of the armistice agreement and are shameful and low-level acts that pose a danger to the daily lives of our people”, the JCS said in another statement.
The anti-North broadcasts on Thursday were the first near the border since June 9, when South Korea resumed them for the first time in six years in response to Pyongyang’s trash balloon launches, a defense ministry spokesman told AFP.
The JCS said it had identified around 200 trash-carrying balloons sent by North Korea as of Friday morning, with about 40 balloons landing in the northern area of Gyeonggi province that surrounds the South Korean capital.
An analysis of the retrieved balloons showed they mostly carried scrap paper and did not contain hazardous materials, the JCS said.
The nuclear-armed North has sent more than a thousand balloons south since May, calling it retaliation for balloons carrying anti-Kim propaganda floated northwards by activists in the South.
The North’s balloons have disrupted more than 100 flights carrying 10,000 passengers, a South Korean lawmaker said early this month.
In response, Seoul has fully suspended a tension-reducing military deal and said in June that it was resuming the propaganda broadcasts along the border.
South Korea’s June 9 broadcast included songs by K-pop megastars BTS along with a report on the global sales performance of Samsung Electronics smartphones, according to Yonhap news agency.
In addition to anti-Kim leaflets sent from the South, isolated North Korea is extremely sensitive about its people gaining access to South Korean pop culture products, with a recent South Korean government report pointing to a 2022 case where a man was executed over possession of content from the South.
Relations between the two Koreas are at one of their lowest points in years.
Prior to the latest propaganda broadcasts, Seoul recently resumed live-fire drills on border islands and near the demilitarized zone that divides the Korean peninsula.
