While North Korea has announced a temporary halt to the dispersion of balloons filled with trash toward South Korea, it clarified its intention to resume if South Korea sends flyers (propaganda leaflets) to North Korea again.
According to the Korean Central News Agency, North Korean Vice Minister of Defense Kim Kang Il said, “We have given South Koreans enough experience to understand how disgusting and resource-consuming it is to pick up scattered pieces of trash.”
Kim referred to the dispersal of the waste-filled balloons as a “thorough countermeasure” and emphasized, “If South Korea resumes the dispersion of anti-North Korea flyers, we will send 100 times of garbage for each leaflet”. He claimed, “From the night of May 28th to the dawn of June 2nd, we dispersed 15 tons of paper waste that human trash likes to play with, using various devices, near the South Korean border and in the metropolitan area.”
The South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff announced that by 1 p.m. on the 2nd, about 720 waste-filled balloons dispersed from North Korea were found in Seoul, Gyeonggi, Chungcheong, and North Gyeongsang Province regions. On the previous day, North Korea resumed spreading after three days, following the release of about 260 garbage balloons to South Korea on the 28th and 29th of last month. So far, it has been identified that North Korea has sent nearly 1,000 garbage balloons.
Although it was expected that the government would resume loudspeaker broadcasts in North Korea in response, it remains to be seen whether the policy will change following North Korea’s temporary halt of the balloon dispersals.
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