A balloon, reportedly despatched by North Korea, is seen in a rice paddy in Incheon, South Korea, June 10, 2024. File | Picture credit score: AP
North Korea on July 18 resumed flying balloons doubtless carrying trash towards South Korea, South Korea’s army mentioned, days after vowing to answer what it known as new cross-border leafleting by South Korean civilians.
South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Employees mentioned in an announcement that the balloons have been flying north of Seoul, which is about an hour’s drive from the border, on the afternoon of July 18.
He warned the South Korean public to watch out of falling objects and report back to authorities in the event that they see balloons on the bottom.
Since late Could, North Korea has launched greater than 2,000 balloons stuffed with scrap paper, items of material, cigarette butts and even manure towards South Korea, claiming they have been a response to South Korean activists sending political leaflets to the North utilizing their very own balloons. No hazardous supplies have been discovered.
In response, South Korea suspended a 2018 de-escalation settlement with North Korea, briefly resuming propaganda broadcasts and front-line live-fire army workout routines in border areas.
South Korean troopers sporting protecting gear examine particles from a balloon allegedly despatched by North Korea, in Incheon, South Korea, June 2, 2024. | Picture credit score: AP
Chilly Struggle-style campaigns between the Koreas got here to a halt after North Korea final despatched trash-carrying balloons towards South Korea in late June.
Earlier this week, North Korean chief Kim Jong-un’s highly effective sister mentioned South Korean balloons had once more been discovered on the border and different areas of North Korea. In her July 16 assertion, Kim Yo-jong threatened additional retaliatory measures, saying South Korean “scum” have to be prepared to pay “a daunting and costly worth.” That raised issues that North Korea might interact in bodily provocations, relatively than balloon launches.
Learn additionally: North Korean chief Kim Yo-jong’s sister calls South Korea’s live-fire drills ‘suicidal hysteria’
South Korea’s army mentioned on July 17 that it has strengthened its readiness to take care of any provocation by North Korea. It mentioned North Korea might fireplace at South Korean balloons that strategy throughout the border.
It was not instantly recognized whether or not South Korean teams had lately dropped leaflets in North Korea. For years, activist teams led by North Korean defectors have used helium-filled balloons to drop anti-North Korean leaflets, USB flash drives taking part in Ok-pop music and South Korean dramas and U.S. greenback payments into the North.
North Korea views such actions as a critical safety risk and a problem to its ban on overseas information for many of its 26 million folks.
In 2020, North Korea destroyed a liaison workplace constructed by South Korea on its territory, which was unoccupied, in an indignant response to South Korea’s civilian leafleting campaigns. In 2014, North Korea fired at balloons flying in the direction of its territory and South Korea returned fireplace, though there have been no casualties.
Tensions between the Koreas have escalated in recent times over North Korea’s missile assessments and the growth of U.S.-South Korean army workout routines that North Korea calls invasion rehearsals.
