Weeks into North Korea’s campaign of launching balloons loaded with trash across the world’s most heavily armed border, some of them hit a symbolically significant target in South Korea on Wednesday: the presidential office in the heart of Seoul, the capital.
North Korea has released more than 3,000 of the trash balloons since May, many of which have reached the South after floating across the Demilitarized Zone between the two nations. So far, they have been a nuisance but have posed no danger. They have landed on trees, farms and urban side streets, their payloads bursting and spilling out waste paper, used cloth, cigarette butts and compost.
On Wednesday, for the first time, some of them landed inside the sprawling compound in central Seoul that includes the office of President Yoon Suk Yeol. The authorities did not say exactly how many had reached the compound, one of the most tightly guarded places in South Korea.
Officials said they waited for the balloons to land before sending a chemical, biological and radiological response team to inspect their payloads, rather than blast them — and scatter their suspicious payloads — from the sky. The team found “nothing dangerous or contaminating,” South Korea’s presidential security service said in a brief statement.
It declined to say what the balloons carried or exactly where they landed inside the 68-acre compound, which also houses the Ministry of National Defense and other military facilities and is about 25 miles from the border.
The balloon campaign is reminiscent of tactics the two Koreas used during the Cold War to scatter propaganda leaflets condemning each other’s governments. That psychological warfare receded after the first summit meeting between the Koreas’ leaders, in 2000.
But in recent years, North Korean defectors living in the South have begun sending leaflet balloons into the North themselves, in a private propaganda campaign. In May, North Korea began sending the trash balloons south, calling it a response to the political “filth” sent by the defectors.
In recent weeks, with the wind blowing from the north, South Koreans have gotten used to receiving text messages from the government alerting them to the latest fleet of North Korean balloons. They are advised to watch the skies and not touch the payloads.
The South Korean military has retaliated for the balloons by turning on high-powered loudspeakers along the Demilitarized Zone to blast K-pop songs and news into the North.
North Korea’s totalitarian regime rules its people with the help of a total information blackout and a personality cult surrounding its leader, Kim Jong-un. It bristles at the infiltration of outside information like the leaflets, or computer memory sticks containing South Korean music and TV dramas, which are often smuggled in through the border with China or sent via balloon by the defectors.
Last month, the South Korean government published a report on the state of human rights in the North, in which it accused Mr. Kim of launching a widespread crackdown on South Korean cultural influence.
The report said internal security officials in the North had randomly inspected citizens’ cellphones to see whether they had picked up turns of phrase from South Korean TV dramas. The North has prohibited brides from wearing white dresses and grooms from carrying them on their backs during wedding ceremonies, condemning such acts as “reactionary” behavior from the South, according to the report.
In 2022, a 22-year-old North Korean was executed in public for enjoying and distributing South Korean songs and movies, the South said in the report.
The balloon battle between Mr. Kim’s government and the defectors in the South shows little sign of letting up, with both governments accusing each other of “crude and dirty” tactics.
Last week, Kim Yo-jong, Mr. Kim’s sister and spokeswoman, said balloons from the South had been found in “some deep areas” of the isolated North, not just near the border.
“Specialized organs are now searching, disposing of and incinerating them,” she said in a statement carried by state media. “People’s inconvenience is increasing in many areas due to the blocking of relevant districts.”
Ms. Kim said the South would pay “a gruesome and dear price” if the South Korean “scum persist in their crude and dirty play.” She added that the North would also change its “mode of counteraction.”
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