North Korea Says 3,500 Trash Balloons Launched Across Border

North Korea said "15 tons of wastepaper," carried by hundreds of balloons, were sent across the border to the South in retaliation for propaganda leaflets denigrating Kim Jong Un.

From May 28 to June 2, South Korea's border regions were littered with balloons carrying mostly trash, and in some cases excrement, in what the North said was a "tit-for-tat" move.

Social media images showed more large balloons carrying plastic bags landing on cities and fields. South Korean authorities said they mostly contained used paper, cloth and cigarette butts, but residents were told to remain indoors to avoid touching the items.

Kim Kang Il, North Korea's vice defense minister, said the regime scattered "more than 3,500 balloons of various sorts" across the border, according to a statement on Sunday in the official Korean Central News Agency.

"We made the ROK clans get enough experience of how much unpleasant they feel and how much effort is needed to remove the scattered wastepaper," the North Korean defense official said, referring to the Republic of Korea, the South's official name.

Pyongyang said it would temporarily stop sending trash balloons as a countermeasure if Seoul prevents "anti-DPRK leaflet scattering" by South Korean activists, referring to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea in the North.

And it warned it would respond by "intensively scattering wastepaper and rubbish hundred times the amount of scattered leaflets and the number of cases."

But the isolated nation, wary of outside messages that might undermine its powerful narrative at home, is unlikely to get its wish.

South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff said it had received reports of nearly 1,000 balloons. Its government, citing freedom of expression, previously dismissed any chance of intervention as rights activists and defectors launch anti-North leaflets with their own balloons.

Park Sang-hak, who heads the Fighters for a Free North Korea rights groups, told the Yonhap news agency that he would consider pausing the propaganda leaflets, but only if Kim Jong Un "politely apologizes for letting South Koreans be hit with trash."

North Korea's decision to send trash balloons across the Military Demarcation Line, the de facto inter-Korean border, appears to be part of an ongoing reaction to its failed attempt to launch another spy satellite in late May.

Since the setback, Kim Jong Un's forces have also fired a salvo of 18 ballistic missiles into its eastern seas and conducted GPS jamming along the Northern Limit Line, the maritime boundary in its western waters.

Seoul has said the balloons and electronic attacks have not meaningfully disrupted the operations of its armed forces, although several of the balloons did interrupt flights at Incheon Airport near the border.

South Korea's defense chief, Shin Won-sik, described the move as "petty and low-grade behavior."

Yonhap, citing a South Korean government source, said Seoul was considering resuming anti-North propaganda broadcasts at the border, a Cold War tactic first used in 1963.

The agency said South Korea has around 40 mobile loudspeakers at 10 front-line positions, which can be used to play messages including Korean pop songs.

The office of President Yoon Suk Yeol said separately that it would move to suspend a 2018 military pact that kept troops from both Koreas away from the Demilitarized Zone.

The North had already quit the agreement in the fall of 2023, and the South's decision is expected to provide it with more options to respond through means including military signaling.