North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s powerful sister vowed on Sunday to respond to a new leaflet-distributing campaign by South Korean civilians, suggesting North Korea will soon resume its leaflet-distributing operations. Sending balloons carrying trash across borders.
Since late May, North Korea Numerous balloons carrying waste paperNorth Korea has hurled paper, rags, cigarette butts and even fertilizer into South Korea in a series of late-night launches it said were in retaliation for South Korean activists who had been using their own balloons to drop political leaflets. No dangerous materials have been found. South Korea has responded by suspending a 2018 de-escalation agreement with North Korea and resuming live-fire drills in the border area.
In a statement carried by state media, Kim Yo Jong said on Sunday morning that “filthy leaflets and things belonging to (South Korean) scum” had again been found in North Korea’s border areas and other areas.
“Despite repeated warnings from (North Korea), the (South Korean) scum refuses to stop this crude and filthy act,” she said.
“In this situation, we have introduced a full-scale countermeasure. The (South Korean) family is tired of bearing terrible humiliation and must be prepared to pay a very high price for their dirty deeds,” Kim Yo Jong said.
Yonhap News
The last time North Korea sent a garbage-filled balloon toward South Korea was in late July. It was not immediately clear if any balloons had been sent to North Korea recently, or by which South Korean activist group. For years, groups led by defectors have been sending giant balloons toward North Korea loaded with anti-Pyongyang leaflets, USB sticks containing K-pop songs and Korean dramas, and U.S. dollar bills.
Experts say North Korea sees the balloon campaign as a serious provocation to the country’s leadership, as it bans most of its 26 million people from official access to foreign news.
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On June 9, South Korea relocated giant loudspeakers along the inter-Korean border for the first time in six years and resumed broadcasting anti-North Korea propaganda.
South Korean authorities say they are not restricting activists from leafleting North Korea following a 2023 Constitutional Court ruling that invalidated a controversial law criminalizing leafleting as an infringement of freedom of speech.
Kim Yo Jong’s comments came a day after North Korea’s Defense Ministry condemned its rival for possessing nuclear weapons and threatened to strengthen its nuclear capabilities and make the United States and South Korea pay an “unimaginably severe price.” New Defense Guidelines It is said that this has made clear their intention to invade North Korea.
