K-Pop Videos, Dramas: South Korea's Response To Trash-Filled Balloons From N Korea

The balloon war between North Korea and South Korea doesn't seem to be ending anytime soon. Activist group Free North Korea Movement sent 10 giant balloons carrying 5,000 USB sticks containing K-pop videos and dramas, and 200,000 leaflets against Kim Jong Un along with 2,000 $1 bills into North Korea. This came after North Korea sent balloons filled with trash, fertilizer, and other waste across the border in what they claim was their response to South Korean activists spreading anti-Kim Jong Un messages.

"We sent facts and truth, love and medicine, and dollar bills, but [the North] sent filth," head of Fighters for Free North Korea, Park Sang-Hak, said in a statement.

Pyongyang has claimed to have sent more than 3,500 balloons carrying 15 tons of trash toward South Korea, as per the state media Korean Central New Agency (KCNA) on Sunday. In a statement carried by North Korean state media, Kim Jong Un's sister Kim Yo Jong said South Korea would soon see "new counteraction” from the North if it continued with the loudspeaker broadcasts. 

"This is a prelude to a very dangerous situation," Kim, who is also an influential member of the regime, said. "I sternly warn Seoul to stop at once this dangerous act," Kim said, adding that Seoul is creating a “new environment of crisis."

In response to all the balloons floating around, South Korea later suspended the inter-Korean military pact signed in 2018 which aimed at easing the tension. The country's Joint Chiefs of Staff has held North Korea "fully responsible" for the current situation and urged the North to "immediately stop such mean acts like sending waste balloons."

The neighbors have using balloons as one of their primary means to spread propaganda material across their shared border since the Korean War broke out in the early 1950s. Since then, they have also continued using radio broadcasts, loudspeakers, and leaflets all in an attempt to influence each other's citizens. The latest balloon exchange which began in May, has now become a full-blown psychological warfare. 

In response to Kim's statement, Lee Sung-joon, spokesperson for South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that they will be conducting more broadcasts in locations where soldiers are well protected and prepared to respond swiftly in case of an attack. "We don’t think that they could provoke us that easily," he said. 

Experts see these tactics as a warning from North Korea, "The balloon launches aren’t weak action at all. It’s like North Korea sending a message that next time, it can send balloons carrying powder forms of biological and chemical weapons," Kim Tae-woo, former president of South Korea’s Institute for National Unification, told the Associated Press.

Amid rising tensions between the two countries, the US, the main ally of South Korea reportedly flew a long-range bomber aircraft over the peninsula and conducted the first precision-guided bombing drill with Seoul. This was done for the first time in seven years as a warning against North Korea, as reported by Independent UK.