'Balloon war' of North and South Korea may blow up

Propaganda battle is damaging already fraught relations

- MAROOSHA MUZAFFAR

The North Korean leadership has vowed retaliation after South Korea resumed loudspeaker broadcasts and activists floated propaganda leaflets over the border, escalating the ongoing “balloon war” and damaging their already fraught bilateral relationship.

In a statement carried by the state-run Korean Central News Agency on Sunday, Kim Yo-jong, sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, denounced the South for “creating a new crisis”. “This is a prelude to a very dangerous situation,” Ms Kim, an influential member of the regime, said. “I sternly warn Seoul to immediately cease its dangerous activities that would further provoke a crisis of confrontation.”

Not long after Ms Kim’s warning, the South Korean military reported yesterday morning that North Korea had sent over 300 balloons across the border overnight. They carried mostly scrap paper and plastic and not any toxic material, according to the Yonhap News Agency.

The neighbours have been sporadically flying balloons filled with propaganda material across their shared border since the Korean war in the early 1950s. They have also used radio broadcasts, loudspeakers and leaflets to influence each other’s citizens, promoting their ideologies and social systems and encouraging soldiers to defect.

The latest exchange began last month when North Korea floated 200 balloons filled with trash in a tit-for-tat response to activists in the South, sending balloons carrying propaganda material about their democratic society and memory devices with K-pop music videos. The psychological warfare has since tipped over into real escalation, with Seoul last week suspending a 2018 nonhostility pact aimed at lowering military tensions.