This should give everyone further indications on how healthy the people in North Korea are:
Parasites have been detected in some of the trash-filled balloons sent by North Korea to South Korea, but no harmful substances were found, Seoul’s unification ministry said Monday.
In recent weeks, North Korea has sent more than 1,000 trash-carrying balloons toward the South on multiple occasions in retaliation for South Korean activists’ leaflet campaigns condemning the North Korean regime.
“Numerous parasites, such as roundworms, whipworms and threadworms, were found in the soil contained in the trash,” the ministry said in a press release, adding that the parasites are believed to originate from human excrement.
The findings are based on an examination of 70 balloons.
I just don’t see restarting propaganda broadcasts as something that will stop these trash attacks. These attack are low cost, effective, and have little risk of escalation for the North Korean regime:
The South Korean government decided, Sunday, to resume loudspeaker broadcasts along the inter-Korean border in response to North Korea’s recent launches of trash-carrying balloons.
Hours after the decision, the military announced that it had aired messages — presumably critical of the North Korean regime — across the border. However, it declined to provide details on the psychological warfare broadcasts, such as their timing, location and delivery methods.
It will be interesting to see if the Yoon administration has the political will to continue to allow the defector groups to send propaganda balloons into North Korea when the response is this:
North Korea is once again sending balloons presumed to be carrying trash to South Korea on Saturday, Seoul’s military said, after it launched nearly 1,000 similar balloons across the border since last week.
The Joint Chiefs of Staff advised people not to touch the objects and report them to nearby military or police authorities, and cautioned of possible damage from the balloons, adding the balloons may move southward overnight due to a change in the direction of the wind.
Since May 28, North Korea has sent the trash-loaded balloons across the border into South Korea, which it described as a “tit-for-tat” response to anti-Pyongyang leafleting.
The North announced it would temporarily suspend the balloon campaign after Seoul warned of “unendurable” countermeasures, but threatened to send “a hundred times the amount of toilet paper and filth” in response to any further leafleting from the South.
Despite the threats, North Korean defector groups have continued their anti-regime campaigns on Thursday and Friday.
You can read more at the link, but this is a provocation that the North Koreans can pretty much continue to do indefinitely. I just don’t see any response by South Korea other than outlawing the defector groups from flying their balloons to end these trash attacks.
The balloon wars between North and South Korea continue:
A North Korean defectors’ group said Thursday it has sent about 10 large plastic balloons carrying propaganda leaflets against the North Korean regime across the border, raising concerns Pyongyang could resume sending trash-filled balloons.
Filled with 200,000 flyers criticizing the regime, dollar bills and USB sticks loaded with K-pop and trot music, the balloons were floated from Pocheon, north of Seoul, early Thursday, according to Park Sang-hak, head of the Fighters for a Free North Korea (FFNK).
A military source confirmed that some of these balloons have flown into the North but said no signs of retaliatory action were detected yet from the North Korean side, including any launch of ballistic missiles or release of balloons loaded with trash.
Another sign of past inter-Korean cooperation is being torn down in North Korea:
South Korea’s spy agency said Wednesday it has detected signs that North Korea has recently been demolishing some sections on the northern side of the inter-Korean railway on the east coast in an apparent move to erase the legacy of inter-Korean exchange and cooperation.
South and North Korea agreed to restore two railways — the Gyeongui and Donghae — in 2000, when the divided countries held the first summit of their leaders. The Donghae railway linked eastern coastal cities across the heavily fortified border.
Moon believes the main reason behind the breakdown of the 2019 Hanoi summit was “the US’ failure to understand the implications of the irreversible closure of the Yongbyon nuclear complex and the complete closure of the Nuclear Weapons Institute.” https://t.co/ryYo4NHmyl
It will be interesting to see if the Yoon administration stops Park Hang-sak and his group, Fighters for a Free North Korea, from sending propaganda balloons to North Korea in order to put and end to the North Korean trash attacks:
A cleaner takes away bags of trash carried airborne by North Korean balloons in a parking lot outside a shopping mall in Siheung, Gyeonggi Province, on June 2, 2024. (Yonhap)
North Korea said Sunday it will temporarily stop sending trash-filled balloons across the border to South Korea, though it also threatened to resume such operations if Seoul sends more anti-Pyongyang leaflets.
In a statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), North Korean Vice Defense Minister Kim Kang-il claimed Pyongyang had sent 3,500 balloons, carrying 15 tons worth of debris, toward South Korea between Tuesday night and Sunday morning.
Kim offered to temporarily halt that activity because it was solely in response to anti-communist leaflets flown up north by South Korean activists.
Kim added that should South Korea send such leaflets again, North Korea will retaliate with balloons carrying “garbage amounting to 100 times” the quantity of those propaganda pieces of paper.
I doubt the North Koreans are going to care much about these loudspeaker broadcasts blaring again:
The presidential National Security Council (NSC) is expected to discuss a plan to resume propaganda campaigns via loudspeakers across the border with North Korea, in response to the North’s launch of some 600 balloons carrying trash to the South, a source close to the matter said Sunday.
The NSC meeting will be held Sunday afternoon and presided over by National Security Adviser Jang Ho-jin, according to the office of President Yoon Suk Yeol.
Earlier in the day, South Korea’s military said North Korea has been sending the trash-carrying balloons to the South since Saturday, despite the South warning it would take “unendurably” painful measures against such provocative acts.
It marks the first time the presidential office will hold an NSC meeting over the North’s balloon provocation.
It will be interesting to see how long the Kim regimes decides to keep launching these trash attacks:
North Korea has sent around 600 more balloons carrying trash to South Korea and continued jamming GPS signals for five straight days against the South, Seoul’s military said Sunday, as South Korea’s presidential office was considering taking countermeasures.
South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said it has detected more than 600 balloons that floated across the Military Demarcation Line separating the two Koreas and fell in different parts of the country between 8 p.m. Saturday and 10 a.m. Sunday.
The balloons carried various pieces of trash, such as cigarette butts, paper and plastic bags, just like the previous balloons, according to the JCS.
“About 20 to 50 balloons are moving per hour through the air and coming down in Seoul, Gyeonggi Province, North Chungcheong Province, and North Gyeongsang Province,” a JCS official said on the condition of anonymity, adding it is possible more balloons will be detected.
You can read more at the link, but these trash attacks are actually very clever. It is a cheap provocation with little threat of escalation that puts pressure on the Yoon administration to negotiate to stop them the longer they go on.
Since North Korea has never recognized the NLL from their point of view any South Korean movements along the NLL are violations they can use as an excuse for a provocation:
The current NLL is depicted with the Blue line and North Korea’s claimed NLL is depicted with the Red line.
North Korea threatened Sunday to take action against South Korea over what it claims are violations of the de facto western maritime border, ratcheting up tensions ahead of a trilateral summit in Seoul.
North Korea’s supreme military leadership instructed its army on Friday to take offensive action against the encroachment upon its sovereignty, North Korea’s Vice Defense Minister Kim Kang-il said, according to the country’s official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).
“We officially warn that we can never tolerate such continued encroachment on our maritime sovereignty and that we may exercise our self-defensive power on or under the water at any moment,” Kim said in a statement carried by the KCNA.
The statement came hours before South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol will have back-to-back bilateral talks with Chinese Premier Li Qiang and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida at the presidential office.
