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.
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.
‘Garbage’ balloons presumably sent by N. Korea This photo, provided by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, shows garbage littered from a balloon presumably sent by North Korea, found in Seoul’s Guro Ward on May 29, 2024. Some 90 such balloons have been discovered so far, according to military and police sources, adding that they contained trash and other waste. (Yonhap)
It is interesting that Kim Jong-un has come out and publicly acknowledged the failed satellite launch. I think this is probably because the Kim regime wants satellite launches to be viewed as a civilian action and being transparent about them supports that narrative:
North Korea’s leader acknowledged Monday’s failed attempt to place a spy satellite into orbit but vowed to work harder to boost his country’s space capabilities, according to the state-run Korean Central News Agency. Kim Jong Un made the rare admission during a speech to scientists at the Academy of Defense Sciences in Pyongyang on Tuesday, the day after a rocket carrying the satellite exploded roughly two minutes after launch.
“This launch failed … but there is something that we need to clarify, whether it was successful or not,” he said, according to Wednesday’s KCNA report. “The possession of military reconnaissance satellites is necessary for our country to strengthen self-defense. “Through failure, we can learn more and develop in a bigger way,” he added.
I have to give the Kim regime points for creativity on this latest provocation because this is definitely a new one:
North Korea has sent more than 150 balloons carrying trash across the inter-Korean border, Seoul’s military said Wednesday, after the North warned of “tit-for-tat action” against anti-Pyongyang leaflets flown by the South’s activists.
Since Tuesday night, the balloons have crossed the border to fall in various locations across the country, reaching as far as the southeastern province of South Gyeongsang, and scatter waste as they fell to the ground, according to the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS).
The fallen balloons appeared to have carried various pieces of trash, such as plastic bottles, batteries, shoe parts and even manure, a JCS official said, with military officials collecting the objects for a detailed analysis.
A recent failed launch attempt of another reconnaissance satellite by North Korea is a clear demonstration of the political importance assigned to launches by Kim Jong-un and his desire to meet the goal of launching three satellites in 2024.https://t.co/0wYNqZhQIT
I can remember over 20 years ago when North Korea was sending propaganda leaflets into South Korea and it appears we are going back to those times:
South Korea’s military said Tuesday it is vetting objects assumed to be propaganda leaflets distributed by North Korea.
“The military is taking measures after unidentified objects assumed to be North Korean propaganda leaflets were found in border areas in Gyeonggi and Gangwon provinces,” the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said in a notice sent to the press.
The JCS advised residents in the areas to refrain from accessing the objects and report to nearby military or police authorities in the event they discover such objects.
Earlier, North Korea warned of taking “tit-for-tat action” against the distribution of anti-Pyongyang leaflets in border areas.
“Mounds of wastepaper and filth will soon be scattered over the border areas and the interior of the ROK and it will directly experience how much effort is required to remove them,” Kim Kang-il, the North’s vice defense minister, said in a statement released via state media, using the acronym for South Korea’s official name.
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.
