Large white balloons carrying plastic bags of North Korean trash including excrement have been floating over South Korea.
The balloons from North Korea were detected, Seoul’s military said, triggering emergency warnings at around 11:30 p.m. on Tuesday to border-town residents to avoid going outdoors because of “suspicious objects” floating in the sky.
About 260 balloons were found scattered across the country.
One landed gently on a street, and a clear plastic bag was left intact. Another crashed through the greenhouse roof of a local grape farmer. Many others broke apart and spilled their contents onto sidewalks and streets: shreds of pink, blue and white paper, an empty laundry-detergent bag and dark clumps that looked like excrement.
There was no doubt that the sender was Kim Jong Un’s regime, which days earlier had vowed in state media to heap “mounds of waste paper and filth” on South Korea.
On Wednesday evening, North Korea took responsibility in a statement issued by Kim Yo Jong, the dictator’s younger sister and regime mouthpiece.
She expressed bafflement over South Korea’s assertions that the balloons had violated international law, suggesting they be received as sincere presents. “I cannot understand why they are making a fuss as if they were hit by [a] shower of bullets,” Kim said.
Pyongyang is getting its own back following the unwelcome swarm of balloons from a South Korean activist group, which sent 300,000 anti-regime leaflets and thousands of USB drives containing K-pop music from the likes of boy band BTS.
Image by Stefan Schweihofer from Pixabay