On May 29, 2024, a balloon believed to be launched by North Korea appeared over a rice field in Cheorwon, South Korea. The balloon was carrying various objects, including what appeared to be garbage and excrement.
Yonhap News Agency | Reuters
The balloon fight continues.
Defectors from a militant group in Seoul are fighting back — not with balloons filled with trash and excrement, but with K-pop music and dollar bills.
The Free North Korea Movement said on Thursday it had launched 10 giant balloons into North Korea, carrying 5,000 USB flash drives containing popular South Korean movies and TV series, 200,000 leaflets denouncing North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and 2,000 1 Dollar banknotes.
Just last week, North Korea sent balloons filled with garbage, fertilizer and other waste across the border in what it said was a tit-for-tat response to similar tactics used by South Korean activists to spread anti-North Korea messages.
“We sent facts and truth, love and medicine and dollar bills, but (North Korea) sent filth,” the official said. Free Korea Fighter Park Sang-haksaid in a statement.
Foreign media, information and culture – including K-pop music and drama produced in South Korea – are banned in reclusive North Korea because they represent a challenge to Kim Jong Un’s totalitarian regime. Center for Strategic and International Studies explain.
Pyongyang reportedly claims to have launched more than 3,500 balloons carrying 15 tons of garbage to its neighbor Official media North Korea Central News Agency (KCNA) on Sunday.
North Korea’s Deputy Defense Minister Kim Kang-il said the country would temporarily stop throwing trash at the border, but warned that if activists continued to distribute leaflets, North Korea would spread “hundreds of times the amount of trash than South Korea.”
In response to North Korea’s abandoned balloons, South Korea suspended this military treaty between north and south korea Signed in 2018, it was intended to ease hostilities. The move allows Seoul to resume military training near the border and broadcast propaganda broadcasts and Korean pop songs through loudspeakers.
South Korean Prime Minister Han Deok-soo said the suspension would remain in effect until “mutual trust between the North and South is restored.”
Technically, North and South Korea are still at war because the Korean War from 1950 to 1953 ended with a ceasefire rather than a peace treaty.
Over the years, groups like this The Free Korea Movement has deployed The balloons carried items such as medicine, propaganda leaflets, and South Korean news and media into North Korea.
have There is no legal basis to prohibit ordinary citizens from The United States banned balloons from being sent to North Korea after South Korea’s Constitutional Court struck down a law in 2023 that banned the delivery of leaflets and other information.
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