North Korea says the balloons are a response to leaflets dropped across the border by activists in South Korea.
North Korea launched more garbage-laden balloons toward South Korea after a similar campaign earlier in the week, according to the latter's military, in what Pyongyang calls retaliation for activists dropping anti-North Korea leaflets across the border.
South Korea's Ministry of National Defense did not immediately comment on the number of balloons or how many landed in South Korea. South Korea's Yonhap news agency, citing unnamed military sources, said that as of Saturday night officials found about 90 balloons dropping paper and plastic trash and cigarette butts in areas of the capital, Seoul, and nearby Gyeonggi province.
The military advised people to be careful about falling objects and not to touch objects suspected of being from North Korea, but to report them to military or police offices. There were no immediate reports of injuries or damage.
In Seoul, the city government sent text alerts saying that unidentified objects suspected to have come from North Korea were detected in the skies near the city and that the military was responding to them.
The North's balloon launches added to a recent series of provocative moves, including the botched launch of a spy satellite and a barrage of short-range missile launches this week that the North said were aimed at demonstrating its ability to attack the South preemptively.
South Korea's military sent rapid chemical response and explosive removal teams to recover the remains of about 260 North Korean balloons that were found in various parts of the country from Tuesday night to Wednesday. The military said the balloons carried various types of garbage and manure, but no dangerous substances such as chemical, biological or radioactive materials. Some of the balloons were found with timers suggesting they were designed to pop garbage bags into the air.
In a statement Wednesday, Kim Yo Jong, the powerful sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, confirmed that the North sent the balloons to carry out her country's recent threat to “scatter piles of waste paper and garbage” in South Korea in answer. to leaflet campaigns by South Korean activists.
He hinted that balloons could become the North's standard response to leafleting in the future, saying the North would respond by “spreading trash dozens of times more than they're spreading to us.”
South Korea's military has said it has no plans to shoot down the balloons, citing concerns about causing damage or the possibility that they contain dangerous substances. Shooting balloons near the border would also risk provoking retaliation from the North at a time of high tensions.
“[We] We decided it was best to drop the balloons and recover them safely,” Lee Sung Joon, spokesman for South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff, said during a briefing Thursday.
North Korea is extremely sensitive to any outside attempts to undermine Kim Jong Un's stranglehold on the country's 26 million people, most of whom have little access to foreign news.
In 2020, North Korea blew up an empty liaison office built by South Korea on its territory after a furious response to South Korea's civilian leaflet distribution campaigns. In 2014, North Korea fired at propaganda balloons flying toward its territory and South Korea returned fire, although there were no casualties.
In 2022, North Korea even suggested that balloons flown from South Korea had caused a COVID-19 outbreak in the isolated nation, a highly questionable claim that appeared to be an attempt to blame the South for worsening inter-Korean relations.
