South Korea said Friday it has restarted anti-Pyongyang propaganda broadcasts across the border in response to North Korea's resumption of trash-carrying balloon launches. South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement that its frontline loudspeaker broadcasts were conducted between Thursday evening and Friday morning in areas where North Korea floated the balloons. The broadcasts could trigger an angry response from North Korea, which is extremely sensitive to attempts to undermine its political system, the AP reports. In 2015, when South Korea restarted loudspeaker broadcasts for the first time in 11 years, North Korea fired artillery rounds across the border, prompting the South to return fire, according to South Korean officials. No casualties were reported.
South Korea's military earlier said North Korea floated the balloons on Thursday afternoon in its seventh such balloon campaign in recent months. The North had vowed to respond to what it called repeated South Korean civilian leafleting campaigns across the border. Starting in late May, North Korea has floated more than 2,000 balloons carrying wastepaper, scraps of cloth, cigarette butts, and even manure toward South Korea, saying they were in response to South Korean activists sending political leaflets to the North via their own balloons. No hazardous materials were found.
In response, South Korea suspended a 2018 tension-reduction deal with North Korea, resuming propaganda broadcasts briefly and front-line live-fire military drills at border areas. On Tuesday, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un's sister said South Korean balloons have been found again. In her statement, Kim Yo Jong threatened new retaliatory steps, saying South Korea must be ready to pay "a gruesome and dear price." That raised concerns about physical provocations, rather than balloon launches. South Korea's military said Wednesday it has boosted its readiness to brace for any provocation by North Korea, per the AP. It said North Korea may fire at incoming South Korean balloons across the border.
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