North Korea Unleashes Balloon Barrage, Showering South Korea with Waste

Pyongyang launched about 190 balloons yesterday, Friday night, the general staff of the South Korean armed forces announced in Seoul. About 100 of them have already landed in South Korea, mostly in the northern part of the country.

The bags hanging from the balloons contain “mostly paper and plastic trash,” the same source said.

This episode is marked against the background of the visit to South Korea by the outgoing Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, who had talks with South Korean President Yun Suk-yeol yesterday, Friday.

In early May, Pyongyang sent nearly 5,000 balloons to South Korea, saying it was in retaliation for propaganda balloons sent by South Koreans to North Korea.

Relations between the two neighbors are at their worst in years. North Korea recently announced the deployment of 250 ballistic missile launchers along its southern border.

In response, South Korea resumed broadcasting propaganda messages from loudspeakers along the border, completely suspended a military accord aimed at reducing tensions and resumed live-fire high schools on border islands and near the demilitarized zone that divides the korean peninsula.