North Korea launches more ‘filth’ balloons – Seoul
The South Korean military accused North Korea of launching more balloons filled with trash toward Seoul on Saturday. Pyongyang floated hundreds of inflatables containing “filth” southward during the week, in retaliation for South Korea dropping propaganda flyers over its neighbor.
The military did not say how many balloons were launched on Saturday. However, South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency reported that around 90 dropped their dirty payload over the capital and nearby Gyeonggi province.
North Korea sent around 260 large balloons floating southward on Tuesday and Wednesday, carrying trash such as cigarette butts, plastic, and human waste. The South Korean military said that it found timers attached to some of the burst balloons, indicating that they were designed to pop in mid-air.
South Korean Defense Minister Shin Won-sik called the stunt “unimaginably shameful and base for a normal country,” and “a grave violation of the Armistice Agreement,” which halted – but did not resolve – the Korean War in 1953.
Kim Yo Jong, the sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, said that the balloons were launched in response to the South Korean military using a similar tactic to drop propaganda leaflets over North Korean soil.
In a statement published by North Korea’s KCNA news agency on Wednesday, Kim described the balloons as “sincere gifts,” and said that more would follow.
“When you experience how unpleasant and tiring it is to be sent sticky filth, you will realize that you can’t talk about freedom of expression so easily when it comes to [leafleting] in border areas,” she said. “We make it clear that in the future, we will respond to each case with dozens of times the amount of waste that [the South] Koreans spray on us.”
Tensions between Seoul and Pyongyang have spiked in recent days, with North Korea attempting to launch what the South described as a spy satellite on Monday, before test-firing around ten ballistic missiles on Friday. On the other side of the armistice line, South Korea and the US held joint military exercises involving more than 90 aircraft on Monday.
