A North Korean balloon carrying garbage landed on Seoul’s presidential palace Thursday, according to authorities, with local media saying that it contained propaganda leaflets mocking President Yoon Suk Yeol and his wife.
South Korean activist groups have long delivered material northward, generally in the form of balloons bearing leaflets, US dollar bills, and, on occasion, USB drives containing K-pop or K-dramas, both of which are prohibited in the strictly controlled north.
The event occurred after Kim Yo Jong, the influential sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, stated earlier this week that officials detected and erased “political motivational rubbish sent by the ROK scum,” referring to South Korea’s official name, the Republic of Korea.
“The ROK military gangsters’ reckless infringement on the DPRK’s sovereignty is a hideous military provocation that can never be pardoned,” Kim declared, referring to North Korea’s official name, according to a state media report on Tuesday.
South Korea’s presidential security office said in a statement on Thursday that a balloon dispatched from across the inter-Korean border deposited garbage on the property in Seoul’s Yongsan area, but no dangerous objects or materials were located.
“Seoul will have to experience it firsthand to know properly how dangerous [of an] act it committed and how terrible and fatal the consequences it brought on itself are,” Kim stated, according to a state media report on Tuesday.
Pyongyang has flown thousands of balloons carrying rubbish and propaganda leaflets across the border since May, in response to South Korean activists’ propaganda leaflet drops into the North.
Thursday’s incident is the second time a balloon has thrown waste on South Korea’s presidential office, after a similar occurrence in July, raising fears about the vulnerability of critical South Korean installations in the case of a North Korean strike.