North Korea, it’s safe to say, isn’t a big fan of its southern neighbour.
Usually, the country shows its displeasure with South Korea by casually reminding the world of its nuclear arsenal.
But since last week, North Korea has sent some 1,000 plastic balloons filled with ‘excrement’, cigarette butts, toilet paper and other rubbish.
Now South Korea is fighting back – well kind of. A group of North Korean defectors launched 10 large balloons filled with pamphlets against Kim Jong Un, flash drives loaded with K-Pop and US dollar bills.
The Free North Korea Movement said the payloads from Pocheon-si, a city in Gyeonggi-do about 18 miles from the border, at about 1am.
Tied to the balloons were banners reading: ‘The people’s leader Kim Jong Un sent trash to the people of the Republic of Korea, but North Korean defectors send truth and love to North Koreans!’
Inside the balloons were 5,000 USBs containing songs by K-pop bands, ‘Emperor of Trot’ Na Hoon-ah and ballad artist Lim Young-woong.
Videos from the 2002 Korean drama Winter Sonata and 2,000 one-dollar bills were also inside the bags, South Korean news agency Yonhap reported.
The Free North Korea Movement Association said the balloons also contained 200,000 anti-North Korea leaflets, sent to ‘condemn Kim Jong Un’s absurd remarks that, “South Korea is an unchanging main enemy”‘.
The North Korean Supreme Leader made the remark earlier this year as he said unification between the two Koreas is ‘impossible’, according to state-owned media.
‘As long as Kim Jong Un does not apologise, we will continue to send “North Korea leaflets” that are letters of truth and freedom to our beloved North Korean compatriots,’ the Free North Korea Movement Association added.
Some of the balloons managed to drift across the world’s most heavily armed border and into North Korea, military sources told the Maeil Business Newspaper.
The North Korean defectors distributed 300,000 anti-Pyongyang leaflets last month, material they hope will plug the information blackout in North Korea.
In late May, the South Korean army sent bomb, chemical and biological terrorism response squads to inspect hundreds of plastic bags which had drifted across the Demilitarized Zone, the buffer between the two Koreas.
Typically, the North likes to launch rockets carrying satellites and ballistic missiles.
Inside, the squads only found rubbish. Scraps of paper, worn-out shoes, crumpled bottles of water and excrement, though Seoul would claim it was compost.
The military said the rubbish was released by timers when the balloons reached South Korean airspace.
‘Acts like this by North Korea are a clear violation of international law and a serious threat to the safety of our people,” the South Korean military said in a statement.
‘We issue a stern warning to North Korea to stop this anti-humanitarian and dirty operation.’
It seems North Korea doesn’t mind playing dirty. Kim Kang Il, a vice defence minister of North Korea, said Pyongyang hopes to see ‘mounds of wastepaper and filth… scattered over the border areas and the interior’.
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This isn’t the first time these ‘balloon wars’ have happened. The two Koreas used balloons to send propaganda leaflets into each other’s territory during the Cold War.
North Korean defectors would reuse these tactics in the early 2010s, sending balloons carrying computer thumb drives with K-dramas, bibles and leaflets referring to the Kims as ‘pigs’ and ‘vampires’ in 2014.
Banners also described the south as a ‘people’s paradise’ and the north as ‘the people’s living hell’.
North Korea’s military used machine guns to fire the balloons down in 2014.
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