North Korea is extremely sensitive to any outside attempt to undermine Kim Jong Un’s absolute control over the country’s 26 million residents, most of whom have little access to foreign news. Photo: Istock
According to the South Korean military, North Korea launched more waste balloons towards the South after a similar campaign earlier this week, in what Pyongyang calls retaliation for activists flying anti-North Korean leaflets over the border.
South Korea’s Defense Ministry did not immediately comment on how many balloons it had detected or how many had landed in South Korea. The military advised people to beware of falling objects and not to touch items suspected of coming from North Korea, but instead report them to the military or police.
In the capital Seoul, the city government sent text message alerts saying that unidentified objects believed to have flown from North Korea were detected in the sky near the city and the military responded.
The North’s balloon launches added to a recent series of provocative moves, including the failed launch of spy satellites and the testing of about a dozen suspected short-range missiles this week.
The South Korean military has sent chemical rapid response and explosive ordnance disposal teams to recover the debris of some 260 North Korean balloons found in various parts of the country from Tuesday evening to Wednesday. The military said the balloons carried various types of waste and manure, but not hazardous materials such as chemical, biological or radioactive materials.
In a statement on Wednesday, Kim Yo Jong, the powerful sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, confirmed that the North sent the balloons to respond to her country’s recent threat to dump piles of waste paper and garbage in South Korea. Korea in response to leaflet distribution. campaigns by South Korean activists.
She hinted that balloons could become the North’s default response to leaflet distribution, saying the North would respond by spreading “tens of times more waste than the waste being spread to us.”
North Korea is extremely sensitive to any outside attempt to undermine Kim Jong Un’s absolute control over the country’s 26 million residents, most of whom have little access to foreign news.
In 2020, North Korea blew up an empty South Korean-built liaison office on its territory after a furious response to South Korean civilian leaflet campaigns. In 2014, North Korea fired at propaganda balloons flying toward its territory and South Korea fired back, although there were no casualties.
In 2022, North Korea even suggested that balloons flown from South Korea had caused a COVID-19 outbreak in the isolated country, a highly dubious claim that appeared to be an attempt to blame the South for the worsening international -Korean relations.
(Only the headline and image of this report may have been reworked by Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is automatically generated from a syndicated feed.)
First print: June 1, 2024 | 6:47 PM IST