North Korea has resumed an extraordinary tactic to show its anger toward South Korea: dumping garbage from the air over the world's most heavily armed border.
South Korea's military said it found 260 balloons floating in the Demilitarized Zone, the buffer zone between the North and South Koreas, between Tuesday night and Wednesday. Soon after, residents across South Korea, including in the capital Seoul, reported seeing plastic bags falling from the sky.
Authorities sent in chemical and biological counterterrorism units and bomb disposal teams to check for explosives, but found only garbage including cigarette butts, plastic bottles, used paper and shoes, and what appeared to be compost. The South Korean military said the garbage had been released on a timer when the balloon reached South Korean airspace.
North Korea has adopted an increasingly belligerent military posture in recent years. Following this week's unusual attack, South Korea issued mobile phone warnings to residents near the inter-Korean border, urging them to avoid outdoor activities and to be on the lookout for unidentified objects falling from the sky. The warning message contained an automatically generated phrase in English: “Air raid warning,” causing confusion. The government said it would fix the glitch.
“Such actions by North Korea are a clear violation of international law and a serious threat to the safety of our people,” South Korea's military said in a statement on Wednesday. “We solemnly warn North Korea to stop this anti-humanitarian and dirty operation.”
The North Korean balloons arrived in South Korea just days after the Pyongyang government accused defectors living in South Korea of ​​”scattering leaflets and various filthy things” in border counties and vowed to take “retaliatory measures.”
“Large amounts of waste paper and filth will soon be strewn across the border and inland areas of South Korea,” North Korea's Vice Defense Minister Kim Kang Il said in a statement Saturday. “North Korea will experience firsthand how much effort it takes to remove them.”
During the decades of the Cold War following the 1950-1953 Korean War, the two countries waged a fierce psychological war, bombarding each other with propaganda broadcasts and sending millions of propaganda leaflets across the border.
These tactics have waxed and waned depending on the political climate on the Korean peninsula. The two Koreas agreed to ease up on their propaganda battle after a landmark summit in 2000, when they agreed to pursue reconciliation. They reaffirmed that agreement again when North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and South Korean President Moon Jae-in met in 2018.
But defectors and conservative South Korean activists continued to send balloons into North Korea stuffed with mini Bibles, dollar bills, computer USB sticks with South Korean soap operas and leaflets calling Kim Jong Un and his father and grandfather, who ruled North Korea before him, a “pig,” a “vampire” and a “womanizer.”
Supporters say the balloons have helped chip away at the information censorship and personality cult that North Korea imposes on its people.
North Korea was so furious that its military fired anti-aircraft guns to shoot down plastic balloons bound for the north. In 2016, it retaliated by sending balloons filled with cigarette butts and other trash, as well as leaflets calling South Korea's then-leader, Park Geun-hye, an “evil witch.” A few years later, it claimed balloons from South Korea were carrying the new coronavirus.
In 2021, South Korea enacted a law banning the scattering of propaganda leaflets into North Korea. The government at the time argued that the balloons would only provoke North Korea and create waste in South Korea, as some balloons cannot cross the border.
But last year, a southern constitutional court struck down the law, saying it unconstitutionally infringed on freedom of speech.
