Explained: Why Did North Korea Dump Trash Balloons Into South Korea?

North Korea dumped 720 waste balloons stocked with manure, cigarette butts, waste batteries and reportedly even diapers, across the armed border of rival South Korea last week. Although ruled out by South Korea to have been carrying human waste, it was said that Seoul would start taking "steps that North would find unbearable."

Two days later, South Korea suspended an agreement signed with North Korea in 2018 that ruled out all hostile activities such as military drills and reconnaissance flights, along their border.

Photo Credit: Credit: X/Ramchiar Foundation

It did not describe how it would "revive all military activities" restricted under the 2018 agreement, but one of the options being considered was to switch on their loudspeakers along the inter-Korean border to blast K-pop music, which the North's leader, Kim Jong-un, has found so threatening that he once called it a "vicious cancer."

In 2016, North Korean balloons carrying trash and propaganda leaflets wrecked cars and valuable property in South Korea. In 2017, Seoul discovered another North Korean balloon with leaflets. This week, however, no leaflets were found in the balloons.

Pictures of the North Korean balloons littered on trees, farmland, and on urban side streets were posted on social media. Since the North is known to hold large biological and chemical weapons, South Korean officers were seen draped in biohazard and bomb-disposal gear while inspecting the trash piles, yet the South Koreans remained calm, viewing this situation as an irritating antic from their irksome neighbour.

Why did Pyongyang implement this?

South Koreans sometimes sent leaflets across the border through their own balloons, which was very sensitive to the North because they harbour criticism regarding the Kim dynasty's authoritarian rule. This led to the destruction of an empty South Korean office in 2020.

"The point is to make the South Korean people uncomfortable, and build a public voice that the government's policy toward North Korea is wrong," Koh said.

"The balloon launches aren't weak action at all," said Kim Taewoo, a former president of South Korea's government-funded Institute for National Unification.

"It's like North Korea sending a message that next time, it can send balloons carrying powder forms of biological and chemical weapons."

According to Euro News, Kim Kang Il, a North Korean vice defence minister, said Pyongyang would temporarily suspend its balloon activities. He said the 3,500 balloons carrying 15 tonnes of wastepaper had left the South Koreans with "enough experience" of the unpleasantness.

When did it begin?

During the Cold War, North and South Korea tried to influence each other's people with propaganda. They used shortwave radio to send messages and played propaganda songs on loudspeakers along the border. They also sent leaflets by balloons, criticising each other's governments. Both countries banned these leaflets. In South Korea, children were given rewards like pencils if they found the leaflets and reported them. However, until recently, balloons from North Korea rarely carried just common trash.

The implications

Last week, North Korea started sending hundreds of balloons filled with trash to South. Kim Yo Jong, Kim Jong Un's sister, said this was to retaliate against South Korea for sending leaflets into North Korea.

"We have tried something they have always been doing, but I cannot understand why they are making a fuss as if they were hit by a shower of bullets," Kim Yo-jong, said.

"If they experience how unpleasant the feeling of picking up filth is and how tiring it is, they will know that it is not easy to dare to talk about freedom of expression."

"Recently, North Korea carried out a despicable provocation that would make any normal country ashamed of itself," South Korean President, Yoon Suk Yeol, said in a Memorial Day speech in Seoul.

"The government will never overlook the threat from North Korea. We will maintain an ironclad readiness posture and respond to provocations resolutely and overwhelmingly."