South Korean activists respond to the North’s garbage balloons by sending 200,000 leaflets critical of Kim Jong-un

The almost a thousand balloons loaded with debris that North Korea launched into South Korea between Wednesday and Sunday of last week have not intimidated South Korean activist groups in their task of sending information from the other side of the border against Kim Jong-un’s regime. This Thursday, Fighters For Free North Korea(FFFNK, Fighters for a Free North Korea), has reported that it threw a dozen large plastic aerostats in the direction of the neighboring country, according to the South Korean Yonhap agency. They carried 200,000 leaflets criticizing the North Korean supreme leader, 5,000 USB drives loaded with South Korean music files, including K-pop and trotand K-dramas, plus 2,000 one-dollar bills.

A military source cited by Yonhap has confirmed that some of the balloons sent by FFFNK have crossed the border, but that no reaction from Pyongyang has yet been detected. Among the possible responses that military authorities are considering are the launch of ballistic missiles or the air shipment of more garbage.

On May 29, Seoul accused Pyongyang of launching around 260 airships carrying manure, cigarette butts, scraps of fabric, used paper and plastics over its territory, and which landed in South Korean cities, vineyards, rice fields and roads, according to a statement. then the Joint Chiefs of Staff of South Korea. On Sunday, the South Korean military reported that an additional 700 had been discovered, scattered throughout numerous parts of the country. This is the largest number that the North sends towards the South in its history, a measure that it already resorted to in 2016 and 2018.

This “tit for tat” campaign, as North Korean authorities have called it, comes in response to the sending of 300,000 leaflets by Park Sang-hak, a North Korean defector and head of FFFNK, in early May. The printed materials, which urged the neighboring people to “rise up and put an end” to the dictatorship, traveled aboard 20 balloons, which also carried 2,000 USB drives with South Korean audiovisual content.

The Yonhap agency published this Thursday an image taken last night, in which Park is seen holding up a sign composed of a photograph of the North Korean president and his sister Kim Yo-jong and accompanied by the text: “The enemy of the people Kim Jong-un sent filth and garbage to the people of the Republic of Korea [el nombre oficial de Corea del Sur], but we, the defectors, send truth and love to our fellow North Koreans.” In other images shared by FFFNK, Park and other colleagues can be seen holding the balloons that were carrying packages. “Kim Jong-un has inflicted the worst insult and humiliation on 50 million of our people,” reads a statement from FFFNK in which they promise to continue sending aerostats until Kim himself apologizes.

“Unbearable” measures against the North

Seoul warned on Sunday that it would take “unbearable” measures against the North, including resuming public address broadcasts along the border, an action it has not taken in the past six years. Late that same day, North Korean Vice Minister of Defense, Kim Kang-il, declared that his nation would temporarily suspend its “countermeasures” campaign, during which “3,500 balloons carrying 15 tons of discarded paper” were launched. However, according to the official count of South Korean authorities, fewer than 1,000 have been found.

“We have made families in the Republic of Korea experience how unpleasant it is and the effort it takes to remove the scattered waste,” Kim said in statements reported by North Korean state media. However, he warned that if South Korean activists sent propaganda toward Pyongyang again, they would again release “an amount of filth hundreds of times greater than the pamphlets found.”

The South Korean president, Yoon Suk-yeol, gave a speech this Thursday for Memorial Day in which he assured that his country will not stand idly by in the face of North Korea’s “despicable provocations” and promises to protect the population. through solid military preparation, according to the official reading published by Yonhap. “Peace is maintained through force, not through submission. We can only transform North Korea if we become stronger. Ultimately, we can only restore the freedom and human rights of the North Korean people and move towards a free, prosperous and unified Republic of Korea by becoming stronger,” Yoon said.

The two Koreas are officially still at war after the 1950-1953 war ended with an armistice instead of a peace treaty. The recent exchange of balloons has coincided with an attempt by Pyongyang to jam South Korea’s GPS signals near the western maritime border and simulate nuclear attacks against its neighbor. In response, Seoul has suspended the inter-Korean pact to reduce tensions, signed in 2018, and, as it announced on Wednesday, it is willing to resume artillery exercises near the Military Demarcation Line and the northwestern border islands this month. In recent years, artillery and naval rehearsals, as well as regimental-level field maneuvers, were prohibited because land and sea buffer zones, as well as no-fly zones, had been established to prevent accidental collisions near the border. .

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