Kim Jong Un’s Sister Mocks South Korea with Trash-Filled Balloons: Border Showdown Imminent?

Kim Yo Jong, the sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and Deputy Director of the North Korean Workers’ Party, sarcastically asked for the South Korean government’s understanding. She stated that there are limits to preventing the distribution of trash-filled balloons, which she called “freedom of people’s expression.”

She mockingly criticized the South Korean government’s stance that they cannot prohibit North Korean propaganda leaflets, which are free expression, and chopped the logic by saying that they sent trash-filled balloons to “guarantee the right of South Korean citizens to know.”

According to Yonhap News on the 30th, Kim refuted the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff’s claim that North Korea’s trash-filled balloons violate international law by asking, “Is freedom of expression and international law determined by the direction the balloons fly?” in a speech distributed through the Korean Central News Agency the previous day.

Regarding the distribution of propaganda leaflets by pro-North Korean organizations, she stressed, “They attempted to spread their trashy political agitation and their stray thoughts, which belittle our ideas and system, to us,” and “those in South Korea who have severely insulted and mocked our people must be punished accordingly.”

Regarding the trash-filled balloons, Kim referred to them as “a sincere gift to the demons of liberal democracy who cry out for guarantee of freedom of expression,” suggesting that South Koreans should persist in collecting it. She further emphasized that in response to any waste from South Korea, they would retaliate by dispatching material at a rate tenfold.

Previously, on the 26th, North Korea had announced through a statement by Vice-Minister Kim Kang Il of the Ministry of National Defense that it would respond in kind to the distribution of propaganda leaflets by pro-North Korean organizations. Since the night of the 28th, they have sent giant balloons filled with livestock manure and trash to South Korea.

According to the South Korea Joint Chiefs of Staff, as of 4 p.m. that day, around 260 trash-filled balloons from North Korea had been found nationwide.