South Korean activists said Thursday they had sent 10 balloons loaded with anti-Kim Jong Un leaflets and K-pop music into North Korea, in response to hundreds of trash-carrying balloons from Pyongyang.
North Korea has said its recent balloon blitz — lugging bags of garbage such as cigarette butts and plastic waste — was retaliation for previous missives sent by the activists. Pyongyang called off its campaign Sunday, but has warned it would restart if more balloons came north. Past propaganda tit-for-tats have had real-world consequences for inter-Korean relations.
South Korea has called the latest provocation from its nuclear-armed neighbour “irrational” and “low-class” but, unlike the North’s spate of recent ballistic missile launches, the trash campaign does not violate UN sanctions on Kim’s isolated government.
The defector group Fighters for Free North Korea announced Thursday they had launched 10 balloons northward carrying 200,000 leaflets and 5,000 USB flash drives containing Korean pop music and TV shows, as well as thousands of one-dollar bills.
A photograph released by the group showed an activist holding up a large poster with photographs of the North’s leader Kim Jong Un and his sister and chief government spokeswoman Kim Yo Jong.
“Enemy of the people Kim Jong Un sent filth and trash to the South Korean people, but we the defectors send truth and love to our fellow North Koreans!” the poster says. The same group sent balloons carrying around 2,000 USB drives containing songs by South Korean singer Lim Young-woong, as well as other K-pop tracks and K-dramas, into the North on May 10, they said earlier this week.
North Korea is extremely sensitive about its people gaining access to the South’s flourishing popular culture. Kim Yo Jong last week mocked South Korea for complaining about its balloons, saying North Koreans were simply exercising their freedom of expression — and warning they would retaliate proportionately if more balloons materialised.
South Korea’s parliament in 2020 passed a law banning the sending of anti-Kim leaflets across the border as then-president Moon Jae-in sought engagement with the North. But the Constitutional Court struck down the law last year, calling it an undue limitation on free speech, and there are now no legal grounds for the government to block the balloons, attorney Yoo Jung-hoon told AFP.
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