South to launch 'unendurable' response to North's trash balloons

A South Korean soldier uses a chemical testing device to inspect trash strewn across the ground near a weather observatory in Incheon's Jung District on Sunday morning after a balloon sent over the border by the North landed there. [YONHAP]

South Korea’s National Security Council (NSC) agreed at an emergency meeting on Sunday to take measures the North would find “unendurable” for launching hundreds of trash-laden balloons across into the South, according to a presidential official.

The official, who spoke to reporters on condition of anonymity during a closed-door briefing, said participants at Sunday’s NSC meeting decided Seoul should take steps to retaliate against multiple actions by the North in the past week.

Calling Pyongyang’s “provocations” a “threat to the safety of the South Korean people,” the official said Seoul intends to “undertake measures that the North will find unendurable.”

While declining to specify the exact nature of the measures under consideration, the official said that similar acts by the North in the future would be met with an “even stronger response” from the South.

Over the past week, the North has conducted multiple acts that the South has condemned as violations of both international law and the armistice that concluded fighting in the 1950-53 Korean War.

According to Seoul’s Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) on Sunday, North Korea sent approximately 720 balloons laden with trash into South Korea over the weekend after launching 260 balloons also carrying trash and excrement across the border on Tuesday and Wednesday.

The JCS said the latest batch of balloons floated over the inter-Korean border and fell across South Korea between 8 p.m. Saturday and 10 a.m. Sunday, and that the balloons carried cigarette butts, paper, plastic bags and other waste items.

“Approximately 20 to 50 balloons per hour are making their way down to Seoul, Gyeonggi, North Chungcheong and North Gyeongsang,” a JCS official told reporters on condition of anonymity, leaving open the possibility that more balloons could be detected.

The North launched the first batch of balloons on Tuesday, a day after a space launch vehicle carrying what would have been the regime’s second spy satellite exploded just after takeoff.

Over the weekend, North Korean Vice Defense Minister Kim Kang-il issued a statement via state media that the North planned to scatter “mounds of wastepaper and filth” over South Korea as part of a “tit-for-tat” action against anti-regime leaflets sent over the border by defectors and human rights groups.

The North also began jamming GPS signals near the inter-Korean border on Wednesday, a day before it launched 10 short-range ballistic missiles from near Pyongyang into the East Sea.

In messages delivered over South Korea’s advisory alert system, regional governments have warned people not to touch the packages and to instead report them to nearby military or police authorities.

The Seoul city government said Sunday that it will operate an emergency hotline 24 hours a day to respond to reports filed by residents about the balloon-borne objects.

The presidential office told reporters on Sunday that the South Korean military has thus far refrained from intercepting the balloons mid-flight for fear that they may be carrying toxic chemicals and that detonating them mid-air could cause their contents to disperse more widely.

No casualties have been reported in relation to the North Korean balloons or their packages so far, but one balloon damaged the windshield of a passenger car upon landing in a residential area of Ansan, Gyeonggi, at 10:22 a.m. on Sunday, according to local police.

The balloons have also disrupted operations in commercial areas and agricultural activity in farmlands across the country by forcing local authorities to restrict access to their landing sites.

BY MICHAEL LEE [lee.junhyuk@joongang.co.kr]