North Korea has announced it will temporarily halt its campaign of sending trash-carrying balloons into South Korea, claiming the South Koreans have had “enough experience of how much unpleasant they feel.” This announcement comes hours after South Korea vowed to retaliate with “unbearable” measures over the balloon activities and other provocations.
The North’s announcement was made by a North Korean vice defense minister, who said the balloon activities were a countermeasure against previous South Korean leafleting campaigns. He said that South Korean activists float anti-Pyongyang propaganda leaflets via balloons again, North Korea will its own balloons to dump rubbish hundreds times the amount of the South Korean leaflets found in the North.
Earlier Sunday, South Korea’s military said that more than 700 balloons flown from North Korea were discovered in various parts of the country, in addition to about 260 balloons found a few days earlier. Tied to the balloons were manure, cigarette butts, scraps of cloth, waste paper and vinyl, but no dangerous substances, according to the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
South Korea’s national security director Chang Ho-jin said earlier Sunday that the government decided to take “unbearable” measures against North Korea in reaction to its balloon launches, alleged jamming of GPS navigation signals in South Korea and simulation of nuclear strikes against the South in recent days.
Experts say North Korea’s balloon campaign, reportedly the first of its kind in seven years, is meant to stoke an internal divide in South Korea over its conservative government’s tough policy on the North. They say North Korea is also expected to further ramp up tensions ahead of the U.S. presidential election in November.
