SEOUL: Threatening to restart anti-Pyongyang frontline propaganda broadcasts, South Korea came up with the newest version of the Cold War-style campaign, which is always on and off between them every time North Korea resumes its trash-carrying balloon launches.
North Korea floated huge balloons carrying plastic bags full of garbage across the border on Monday night for the fifth time since late May- a response to South Korean activists flying political leaflets via balloons.
Describing North Korea’s balloon activity as “despicable and irrational,” President Yoon Suk Yeol termed it an “unforgivable and absurd provocation.”
On Tuesday in a speech marking the 74th anniversary of the start of the 1950-53 Korean War, Yoon added that South Korea will maintain overwhelming military readiness to any provocations by North Korea with strong military forces.
According to Seoul’s military, about hundred of these balloons finally landed in South Korean soil mostly in Seoul and nearby areas out of three hundred fifty that were flow. This is about 40-50 kilometers (25-30 miles) away from the border. It was also reported by the military that they were unaware of any hazardous items being found from amongst those carries by their neighbors’ balloons except paper.
In earlier balloon launches over various parts of South Korea, North Korea dropped manure, cigarette butts and waste batteries alongside cloth scraps and waste papers. No major damage was report. In response to this development, gigantic loudspeakers were set up along its border by south korea June ninth for the first time in six years and propaganda broadcast against north korea shortly resumed there.
Lee Sung Joon a spokesperson for Joint Chiefs of Staff told reporters on Tuesday that South Korean military is ready to turn on its borders loudspeakers again. In a written statement, The Joint Chiefs said officials are going to examine certain strategic operational circumstances while resumption depends on how North Korea conducts itself.
The two Koreas used to highly engage in balloon launches and loudspeaker broadcasts as psychological campaigns during the Cold War. Such activities have bee agreed to stop recently between the enemies, though they sometimes resume them increasingly when there is a reignited rancor.
With most of its 26 million people blocked from accessing foreign news by its government, North Korea become too sensitive on South Korean border broadcasts and civil society leafletting campaigns.
South Korean critics made up of defectors from the north also include USB sticks with south korean TV dramas on them as well as a lot of leaflets criticizing human rights violations in North Korea while past South Korean border broadcasts included K-pop songs, weather forecasts and outside news. In a statement released last Friday, Kim Yo Jong, sister to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un referred to them as “human scum” and “disgusting defectors.”
South Koreans officials have maintained that they don’t limit activists who are flying leaflets into North Korea because according to a 2023 constitutional court ruling which declared criminalization of such acts illegal since it infringes on freedom of speech.
Most experts believe that another aim for the Northern campaign is to deepen the debate over civilian leafleting in South Korea and create further internal divisions.
Concerns about North Korea increased mid-June when Russia’s President Vladimir Putin entered into an agreement with their leader Kim Jong Un according to which each party had to render assistance whenever an attack was launch against either one of them besides promising joint cooperation for other purposes. Observers view this deal as marking the strongest link between these two countries since the Cold War ended.
North Korea, according to the US and its allies, has given Russia a significant number of conventional weapons which it needs for its war against Ukraine in exchange for military and economic assistance.
Yoon referred to this Kim-Putin deal as “anachronism” during his Korean War speech. On Monday, South Korea, the U.S. and Japan issued a joint statement strongly condemning Russian-North Korean military cooperation on an expanding scale.
