North Korea despatched a whole lot of balloons final week with luggage of trash into the South (File)
North Korea once more despatched trash-carrying balloons in direction of the South on Saturday, Seoul’s army mentioned, after anti-Pyongyang activists within the South mentioned they’ve despatched balloons with leaflets towards chief Kim Jong Un throughout the border.
“North Korea is once more floating (suspected) balloons carrying trash in direction of the South,” the Joint Chiefs of Employees mentioned in a press release, advising the general public to chorus from touching the balloons if noticed and to report them to authorities.
The announcement got here hours after Seoul’s army mentioned it was on alert for probably extra trash-carrying balloons arriving from North Korea, a possible response to the propaganda balloons despatched this week by activists within the South.
The Seoul metropolis authorities, in addition to the Gyeonggi Province, additionally despatched the same textual content alert to residents on Saturday, warning concerning the balloons.
North Korea despatched a whole lot of balloons in two waves final week with luggage of trash into the South, describing them as a response to anti-Pyongyang propaganda balloons despatched the opposite method by South Korean activists.
Pyongyang introduced a halt to the balloons final Sunday however days later, a South Korean group known as “Fighters for Free North Korea” mentioned it on Thursday had despatched 10 balloons with USB thumb drives containing Ok-pop music and 200,000 leaflets towards chief Kim Jong Un.
One other group, comprising North Korean defectors, additionally mentioned it had despatched 10 balloons on Friday with 100 radios, 200,000 anti-Pyongyang leaflets, and USB thumb drives containing a speech by South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol.
North Korea had mentioned it could reply with “wastepaper and garbage” 100 instances the quantity if extra South Korean leaflets had been despatched.
Final yr, South Korea’s Constitutional Court docket struck down a 2020 regulation that criminalised the sending of anti-Pyongyang propaganda, calling it an undue limitation on free speech.
Consultants say there are actually no authorized grounds for the federal government to cease activists from sending balloons into North Korea.
South Korea’s unification ministry mentioned on Saturday that the problem is “being approached in consideration” of the 2023 courtroom choice.
Kim Jong Un’s highly effective sister Kim Yo Jong mocked South Korea for complaining concerning the balloons final week, saying North Koreans had been merely exercising their freedom of expression.
‘Crash Touchdown on You’
The North Korean balloons final week landed in a lot of places within the South, and had been discovered to be carrying rubbish similar to cigarette butts, cardboard scrap and waste batteries.
In response to the balloons, South Korea on Tuesday utterly suspended a 2018 army cope with the North, which was meant to scale back tensions between the neighbours.
Authorities in Seoul have condemned the North Korean balloons as a “low-class” act and threatened countermeasures that it mentioned Pyongyang would discover “unendurable”.
Activists in South Korea have lengthy despatched balloons northwards, crammed with anti-Pyongyang propaganda, money, rice, and Korean TV collection on USB thumb drives.
These have at all times infuriated North Korea, whose authorities is extraordinarily delicate about its folks having access to South Korean popular culture.
Kuensaem, one other South Korean activist group, informed AFP that it threw 500 plastic bottles into the ocean on Friday close to the border with North Korea.
The bottles had been crammed with rice, money and a USB drive with a South Korean TV collection “Crash Touchdown on You” — which includes a romance between a rich South Korean heiress and a North Korean military officer.
The group has been sending such supplies to the North twice a month since 2015.
“We had been simply doing what we have been doing for a very long time to assist North Koreans who’re ravenous,” the group’s chief Park Jung-oh informed AFP Saturday.
Tensions over the duelling propaganda have boiled over in dramatic style previously.
In 2020, blaming the anti-North leaflets, Pyongyang unilaterally reduce off all official army and political communication hyperlinks with Seoul and blew up a disused inter-Korean liaison workplace on its facet of the border.
(Aside from the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV employees and is revealed from a syndicated feed.)