Gabriela Bernal

Opinion | A wise South Korea would rise above the North’s trash balloons

Seoul should take the initiative in reducing tensions, even if it looks weak. In the inter-Korean chess game, a retreat could be a power move

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A police car drives past a balloon after it lands in a rice field in Ganghwa county, in the city of Incheon, South Korea, on June 10. North Korea has sent more 1,000 trash-carrying balloons over the border. Photo: AFP

Gabriela Bernal

Published: 5:30am, 13 Jun 2024Updated: 5:49am, 13 Jun 2024

Tensions on the Korean peninsula are once again heightened due to dangerous tit-for-tat behaviour between the two Koreas. On Sunday, South Korea announced its resumption of loudspeaker propaganda broadcasts aimed at the North, a day after the latter launched more than 300 trash-carrying balloons across the border.

Pyongyang had previously warned it would launch “100 times” the filth if activists in South Korea continued sending balloons containing anti-North Korean propaganda over the border. The rubbish balloons on Saturday seem to have been a response to the propaganda balloons sent on Thursday and Friday.

After South Korea resumed its loudspeaker broadcasts on Sunday, Kim Yo-jong, the sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, warned that it was a “prelude to a very dangerous situation”. “If South Korea chooses to engage in the leaflet-scattering and loudspeaker provocations across the border, without a doubt, they will witness our new response,” she said.

South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff also reported on Tuesday that about 20 North Korean soldiers briefly crossed the inter-Korean land border on Sunday, but that they retreated immediately after the South fired warning shots and aired warning broadcasts. The incident came just hours before South Korea turned on the propaganda speakers.

Seoul has restarted the loudspeakers after a six-year hiatus. The blasts of propaganda had been suspended since April 2018, when South Korean president Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un agreed to halt hostile acts along the border following their summit in Panmunjom.

Previously, when the South resumed the broadcasts in 2015 in response to landmine explosions in the demilitarised zone (DMZ), the North fired one round from an anti-aircraft gun and three artillery shells at the speakers. The South answered with tens of 155mm artillery shells. This shows just how quickly the security situation can deteriorate over loudspeaker propaganda.