The North said it will then “temporarily dismiss” its plan, saying it had been a “pure failsafe”.
” But, if the South Koreans resume the supply of anti- DPRK leaflets, we may respond by scattering one hundred times the amount of waste paper and garbage, as we have already warned, in proportion to the detected quantity and frequency”, it said, using the acronym for the country’s established name.
Activists in the South have also carried their own balloons, which are sometimes stuffed with rice, rice, or USB thumb drives full of K-dramas, across the border.
Pyongyang earlier this week referred to its” sincere gifts” as retaliation for the propaganda-laden balloons that were flown into North Korea earlier this week.
Nearly half of the country’s population, according to South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, has been landed in northern provinces, including Seoul, the capital, and Gyeonggi, which are both home to nearly half of the country’s population.
According to the JCS, the most recent batch of balloons contained “waste such as cigarette butts, scrap paper, fabric pieces, and plastic,” adding that military officials and police were taking them in.
” Our military is conducting surveillance and reconnaissance from the launch points of the balloons, tracking them through aerial reconnaissance, and collecting the fallen debris, prioritising public safety”, it said.
BALLOON WARS
A presidential official said Seoul would not rule out responding to the balloons by resuming loudspeaker propaganda campaigns along the border with North Korea at the meeting of South Korea’s National Security Council on Sunday.
In the past, South Korea has broadcast anti- Kim propaganda into the North, which infuriates Pyongyang.
” If Seoul chooses to resume anti-North broadcast via loudspeakers along the border, which Pyongyang dislikes as much as Kim balloons, it may lead to a resumption of armed conflict along border regions, such as those in the West Sea,” said Cheong Seong-chang, director of the Korean peninsula strategy at Sejong Institute.