A balloon believed to have been sent by North Korea, carrying various objects including what appeared to be trash and excrement, is seen over a rice field at Cheorwon. Photo: Yahoo News
North Korea has an unusual operation to show its displeasure with South Korea: dumping trash from the sky across the world’s most heavily armed border.
The South Korean military said on Wednesday that it found hundreds of balloons carrying garbage from North Korea.
Between Tuesday night and Wednesday, the South Korean military said that it found 260 balloons drifting across the Demilitarized Zone, the buffer between the two Koreas. Soon, residents across South Korea, including some in Seoul, the capital, reported seeing plastic bags falling from the sky.
The authorities sent chemical and biological terrorism response squads, as well as bomb squads, to inspect the payloads. But they only found garbage, like cigarette butts, plastic water bottles, used paper and shoes, and what looked like compost. The South Korean military said the garbage was released by timers when the balloons reached its airspace.
North Korea in recent years has taken an increasingly belligerent military stance. Its unusual offensive this week prompted South Korea to send a cellphone alert to residents living near the inter-Korean border to refrain from outdoor activities and watch out for unidentified objects falling from the sky. Some confusion arose when the alert message included the auto-generated English phrase “Air raid preliminary warning.” The government said it would fix the glitch.
“Acts like this by North Korea are a clear violation of international law and a serious threat to the safety of our people,” the South Korean military said in a statement on Wednesday. “We issue a stern warning to North Korea to stop this anti-humanitarian and dirty operation.”
The North Korean balloons arrived in South Korea days after Pyongyang accused North Korean defectors living in South Korea of “scattering leaflets and various dirty things” over its border counties and vowed to take “tit-for-tat action.”
“Mounds of wastepaper and filth will soon be scattered over the border areas and the interior” of South Korea, Kim Kang Il, a vice defence minister of North Korea, said in a statement on Saturday. “It will directly experience how much effort is required to remove them.”
During the Cold War decades following the 1950-53 Korean War, the two countries waged fierce psychological warfare, bombarding each other with propaganda broadcasts and sending millions of propaganda leaflets across the border.
Such operations ebbed and flowed depending on the political mood on the Korean Peninsula. The two Koreas agreed to de-escalate their propaganda duel after a landmark summit in 2000 at which they agreed to promote reconciliation. The nations again reaffirmed that agreement when the North’s leader, Kim Jong-un, and President Moon Jae-in of South Korea met in 2018.
However, North Korean defectors and conservative activists in the South continued to send balloons to the North. Their balloons carried mini-Bibles, dollar bills, computer thumb drives containing South Korean soap operas, and leaflets that called Mr Kim and his father and grandfather, who ruled the North before him, “pigs,” “vampires” and “womanizers.”
These balloons, their proponents said, helped chip away at the information blackout and a personality cult North Korea imposed against its people.
North Korea took offence, so much so that its military fired antiaircraft guns to shoot down the northbound plastic balloons. In 2016, it retaliated by sending balloons loaded with cigarette butts and other trash, as well as leaflets calling the then-South Korean leader, Park Geun-hye, an “evil witch.” A few years later, it claimed that balloons from the South were carrying the Covid-19 virus.
In 2021, South Korea enacted a law that banned the spreading of propaganda leaflets in North Korea. The government at the time said that the balloons did little more than provoke the North and also created trash in the South because some balloons never made it across the border.
But last year, the South’s Constitutional Court struck down the law, calling it an unconstitutional infringement on the freedom of speech.
On Wednesday, North Korea admitted to sending trash balloons to the South — and vowed to send more —- to exercise its own “freedom of expression.”
Source:NYT
數百個載有北韓垃圾的氣球被傾倒在韓國
北韓恢復了一項不尋常的行動，以表達對南韓的不滿：從天上向世界上武裝最森嚴的邊境傾倒垃圾。
韓國軍方表示，週二晚至週三期間，發現有 260 個氣球飄過南北韓之間的緩衝區非軍事區。 很快，韓國各地的居民，包括首都首爾的一些居民，報告稱看到塑膠袋從天而降。
當局派出化學和生物恐怖主義應變小組以及拆彈小組去檢查有效載荷。 但他們只發現了垃圾，像是煙頭、塑膠水瓶、廢紙和鞋子，以及看起來像堆肥的東西。 韓國軍方表示，當氣球到達領空時，計時器會釋放垃圾。
近年來，北韓採取了越來越好戰的軍事立場。 本週其不尋常的攻勢促使韓國向居住在南北韓邊境附近的居民發出手機警報，要求他們不要進行戶外活動，並留意從天而降的不明物體。 當警報訊息包含自動產生的英文短語「空襲初步警告」時，出現了一些混亂。 政府表示將解決這個問題。
韓國軍方週三在一份聲明中表示：“北韓的此類行為明顯違反了國際法，對我國人民的安全構成嚴重威脅。” “我們向北韓發出嚴厲警告，要求其停止這種反人道主義和骯髒的行動。”
北韓氣球抵達南韓幾天前，平壤指責居住在南韓的脫北者在其邊境縣“散佈傳單和各種骯髒的東西”，並誓言採取“針鋒相對的行動”。
北韓國防部副部長金康日在周六的聲明中表示，「成堆的廢紙和污物很快就會散落在韓國邊境地區和內陸地區」。 “它會直接體驗到需要付出多大的努力才能將它們移除。”
1950-53 年朝鮮戰爭後的冷戰時期，兩國展開了激烈的心理戰，用宣傳廣播轟炸對方，並向邊境發送數百萬份宣傳傳單。
此類行動的興衰取決於朝鮮半島的政治情緒。 2000年，兩國舉行具有里程碑意義的峰會，同意促進和解，之後兩國同意緩和宣傳鬥爭。 2018 年北韓領導人金正恩和南韓總統文在寅會面時，兩國再次重申了這項協議。
但北韓脫北者和南韓的保守派活動人士繼續向北韓發送氣球。 他們的氣球上載著迷你聖經、美元鈔票、存有韓國肥皂劇的電腦拇指驅動器，以及傳單，這些傳單稱金正恩及其在他之前統治朝鮮的父親和祖父是“豬”、“吸血鬼”和“好色之徒”。 ”
他們的支持者說，這些氣球有助於消除北韓對其人民的資訊封鎖和個人崇拜。
北韓非常生氣，以至於其軍隊發射高射砲擊落北行的塑膠氣球。 2016年，它通過發送裝滿煙頭和其他垃圾的氣球以及稱當時的韓國領導人朴槿惠為“邪惡女巫”的傳單進行報復。 幾年後，它聲稱來自南方的氣球攜帶了 Covid-19 病毒。
2021 年，韓國頒布了一項法律，禁止向北韓散發宣傳傳單。 當時的政府表示，這些氣球除了激怒北韓外，還給南韓製造了垃圾，因為有些氣球從未越過邊境。
但去年，韓國憲法法院否決了該法律，稱其違憲，侵犯了言論自由。
週三，北韓承認向韓國發送了垃圾氣球，並誓言要發送更多垃圾氣球，以行使自己的「言論自由」。
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