North Korea resumed flying balloons on Saturday in a likely attempt to drop trash on South Korea again, South Korea's military said, two days after Seoul activists floated their own balloons to scatter propaganda leaflets in the North.
Animosities between the two Koreas have risen recently because North Korea launched hundreds of balloons carrying manure and trash toward South Korea in protest of previous South Korean civilian leafletting campaigns. In response, South Korea suspended a tension-easing agreement with North Korea to restore frontline military activities.
Saturday's balloon launches by North Korea were the third of their kind since May 28. It wasn't immediately known if any of North Korean balloons has landed on South Korean territory yet across the rivals' tense border.
South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff said that North Korean balloons likely carrying balloons were moving in an eastward direction but they could eventually fly toward the south because the direction of wind was forecast to change later.
The Joint Chiefs of Staff advised the public to beware of falling objects and not to touch balloons found on the ground but report them to police or military authorities.
After the North's two rounds of balloon activities, South Korean authorities discovered about 1,000 balloons which were tied to vinyl bags containing manure, cigarette butts, scraps of cloth, waste batteries and waste papers. Some were popped and scattered on roads, residential areas and schools. No highly dangerous materials were found and no major damages have been reported.
North's vice defense minister, Kim Kang Il, said last week his country would stop the balloon campaign but threatened to resume it if South Korean activists sent leaflets again.
In defiance of the warning, a South Korean civilian group led by North Korean defector Park Sang-hak said it launched 10 balloons from a border town on Thursday carrying 200,000 anti-North Korean leaflets, USB sticks with K-pop songs and South Korean dramas, and one-dollar US bills.
South Korean officials called the North Korean trash balloon launches and other recent provocations as “absurd, irrational." South Korea's suspension of the 2018 military agreement with North Korea would allow it to restart live-fire military drills and anti-Pyongyang propaganda broadcasts at border areas, actions that are certain to anger North Korea and prompt it to take its own retaliatory military steps.
North Korea is extremely sensitive to South Korean civilian leafletting campaigns and frontline propaganda broadcasts as it forbids access to foreign news for most of its 26 million people. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is a third generation of his family to rule North Korea with an iron-fist since 1948.