Earlier this week, Pyongyang described its “sincere gifts” as a retaliation for the propaganda-laden balloons sent into North Korea.
“If Seoul chooses to resume anti-North broadcast via loudspeakers along the border, which Pyongyang dislikes as much as anti-Kim balloons, it could lead to limited armed conflict along border areas, such as in the West Sea,” said Cheong Seong-chang, director of the Korean peninsula strategy at Sejong Institute.
In 2018, during a period of improved inter-Korean relations, both leaders agreed to “completely cease all hostile acts against each other in every domain”, including the distribution of leaflets.
South Korea’s parliament passed a law in 2020 criminalising sending leaflets into the North, but the law – which did not deter the activists – was struck down last year as a violation of free speech.
Kim Jong Un’s sister Kim Yo Jong – one of Pyongyang’s key spokespeople – mocked South Korea for complaining about the balloons this week, saying North Koreans were simply exercising their freedom of expression.
The two Koreas’ propaganda offensives have sometimes escalated into larger tit-for-tats.
In June 2020, Pyongyang unilaterally cut off all official military and political communication links with the South and blew up an inter-Korean liaison office on its side of the border.
The trash campaign comes after analysts have warned Kim is testing weapons before sending them to Russia for use in Ukraine, with South Korea’s defence minister saying this weekend that Pyongyang has now shipped about 10,000 containers of arms to Moscow, in return for Russian satellite know-how.
