North Korea dumps more excrement-filled balloons on the South

North Korea has floated another volley of ‘filth’-filled balloons over the border into the South.

Pyongyang says the dirty protest is retaliation against propaganda leaflets flown over from activists in Seoul.

South Korea’s defence minister Shin Won-sik called it ‘unimaginably petty and low-grade behaviour’ while the public was warned not to touch the bags.

It comes after hundreds of bags carrying trash and excrement were lofted across the heavily fortified border earlier this week. The North called them ‘gifts of sincerity’ and vowed to send more.

The military dispatched rapid response teams and bomb squad personnel to recover debris from around 260 balloons found across the country on Tuesday night.

They said the balloons carried various types of trash and manure but no dangerous substances like chemical, biological or radioactive materials.

Some were found with timers that suggested they were designed to pop mid-air.

Seoul’s defence ministry did not immediately comment on the number of balloons or how many landed in South Korea on Saturday.

The Yonhap news agency said officials found about 90 that dropped paper, plastic rubbish, and cigarette butts in areas in the capital and nearby Gyeonggi province.

In a statement on Wednesday, Kim Yo Jong, the powerful sister of Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un, confirmed that the North sent the balloons to make good on her country’s recent threat to ‘scatter mounds of wastepaper and filth’ in South Korea in response to leafleting campaigns by South Korean activists.

She hinted the balloons could become the standard response to leafletting moving forward, saying they would respond by ‘scattering rubbish dozens of times more than those being scattered to us’.

North Korea is extremely sensitive about any outside attempt to undermine Kim Jong Un’s absolute control over the country’s 26 million people, most of whom have little access to foreign news.

In 2020, North Korea blew up an empty South Korean-built liaison office on its territory after a furious response to South Korean civilian leafleting campaigns.

Two years later, North Korea even suggested that balloons flown from South Korea had caused a Covid-19 outbreak in the isolated nation, a highly questionable claim that appeared to be an attempt to blame Seoul for worsening inter-Korean relations.

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