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ΒιΆΉΚΣΖ΅ Korea plans to nullify peace deal to punish North Korea over trash-carrying balloon launches

SEOUL, ΒιΆΉΚΣΖ΅ Korea (AP) β€” ΒιΆΉΚΣΖ΅ Korea announced Monday it’ll suspend a rapprochement deal with North Korea to punish it over its launches of trash-carrying balloons, even after the North said it would halt its balloon campaign.
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ΒιΆΉΚΣΖ΅ Korean soldiers wearing protective gears check the trash from a balloon presumably sent by North Korea, in Incheon, ΒιΆΉΚΣΖ΅ Korea, Sunday, June 2, 2024. North Korea launched hundreds of more trash-carrying balloons toward the ΒιΆΉΚΣΖ΅ after a similar campaign a few days earlier, according to ΒιΆΉΚΣΖ΅ Korea’s military, in what Pyongyang calls retaliation for activists flying anti-North Korean leaflets across the border. (Im Sun-suk/Yonhap via AP)

SEOUL, ΒιΆΉΚΣΖ΅ Korea (AP) β€” ΒιΆΉΚΣΖ΅ Korea announced Monday it’ll suspend a rapprochement deal with North Korea to punish it over its launches of trash-carrying balloons, even after the North said it would

Over several days, North Korea flew to drop trash and manure on ΒιΆΉΚΣΖ΅ Korea in an angry reaction against previous ΒιΆΉΚΣΖ΅ Korean civilian leafleting campaigns. On Sunday, ΒιΆΉΚΣΖ΅ Korea said it would take β€œunbearable” retaliatory steps in response, before North Korea abruptly announced it would stop across the border.

On Monday, ΒιΆΉΚΣΖ΅ Korea’s presidential national security council said it has decided to suspend a 2018 inter-Korean agreement aimed at easing frontline animosities, until mutual trust between the two Koreas is restored, according to the presidential office.

The security council said the suspension would allow ΒιΆΉΚΣΖ΅ Korea to resume military drills near the border with North Korea and take effective, immediate responses to provocations by North Korea. It said a proposal on the suspension will be introduced at the Cabinet Council on Tuesday for approval.

Observers say ΒιΆΉΚΣΖ΅ Korea needs the deal's suspension to restart blasting anti-Pyongyang propaganda broadcasts, K-pop songs and outside news from border loudspeakers. They say such broadcasts have previously stung in the rigidly controlled North, where most of its 26 million people are not allowed official accesses to foreign news.

The 2018 agreement, reached during a brief period of reconciliation between then-liberal ΒιΆΉΚΣΖ΅ Korean President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, require the Koreas to cease all hostile acts against each other, including propaganda broadcasts and leafleting campaigns.

But the accord doesn’t clearly state civilian leafleting should also be banned. That has allowed to continue to fly balloons to drop anti-Pyongyang leaflets, USB sticks with ΒιΆΉΚΣΖ΅ Korean dramas and world news, and U.S. dollars in North Korea. Enraged over such leafleting campaigns, North Korea has previously fired at incoming balloons and destroyed a ΒιΆΉΚΣΖ΅ Korean-built, unoccupied inter-Korean liaison office in the North.

The 2018 deal has already been in the Tension spiked after North Korea's spy satellite launch last November prompted both Koreas to take steps in breach of the accord β€” ΒιΆΉΚΣΖ΅ Korea resuming frontline aerial surveillance and North Korea restoring border guard posts.

Since last Tuesday, a total of about 1,000 North Korean balloons carrying manure, cigarette butts, scraps of cloth and waste paper have been discovered in various parts of ΒιΆΉΚΣΖ΅ Korea. No hazardous substances were found, according to ΒιΆΉΚΣΖ΅ Korea's military.

On Sunday night, Kim Kang Il, a North Korean vice defense minister, said the North would stop its balloon campaign because it left the ΒιΆΉΚΣΖ΅ Koreans with β€œenough experience of how much unpleasant they feel.” He said North Korea will fly balloons again if ΒιΆΉΚΣΖ΅ Korean activists restart their own balloon activities.

Experts say North Korea’s balloon campaign, reportedly the first of its kind in seven years, is meant to trigger a divide in ΒιΆΉΚΣΖ΅ Korea over its current conservative government's tough policy on the North. Since 2022, North Korea has dramatically ramped up its weapons tests in what analysts call an attempt to bolster its nuclear capability and increase its leverage in future diplomacy with the U.S.

Hyung-jin Kim, The Associated Press

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