SEOUL: North Korea has launched hundreds more balloons filled with rubbish towards the South, Seoul's military said on Saturday, the latest salvo in the two countries' provocative and propaganda campaigns.
North Korea has launched more than 900 trash balloons in the past three days, including about 190 on Friday night, of which about 100 have already landed, mostly in Seoul and the northern province of Gyeonggi, South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff said.
The bags attached to the balloons contained “mainly paper and plastic waste,” the military said, adding that they did not pose any risk to public safety.
North Korea has sent nearly 5,000 garbage-filled balloons to the South since May, saying they are retaliation for propaganda balloons launched into the North by South Korean activists.
In response, Seoul suspended a military agreement with Pyongyang to reduce tensions and resumed some propaganda broadcasts from loudspeakers along the border.
Leif-Eric Easley, a professor at Ewha University in Seoul, said balloon bombings were an ineffective propaganda strategy for North Korea.
Kim Yo-jong, sister of leader Kim Jong Un and a key spokeswoman for the regime, “may think the trash balloons exacerbate political divisions in South Korea, but they do more to tarnish North Korea's international image,” Easley said.
Residents in the south, however, are “upset by the necessary clean-up operations and worried about a possible escalation,” he added.
“The most reasonable way out of the current impasse is for Pyongyang to resume diplomacy with Seoul, provided that South Korean civic groups voluntarily refrain from launching balloons.”
The latest launches took place as Japan's outgoing Prime Minister Fumio Kishida was in Seoul for a two-day visit, meeting with South Korean leader Yoon Suk Yeol on Friday.
The two discussed the importance of “cooperation between Korea and Japan, and also with the United States, in responding to the North Korean nuclear issue.”
Relations between the two Koreas are at one of their lowest points in years after North Korea recently announced the deployment of 250 ballistic missile launchers on its southern border.
