Trash dropped by a North Korean balloon falls on South Korea’s presidential compound

SEOUL —  Trash from at least one North Korean balloon fell on the South Korean presidential compound Wednesday, raising worries about the security of key South Korean facilities from North Korean provocations.

The rubbish that fell on the ground at the compound in central Seoul contained no dangerous material and no one was hurt, South Korea’s presidential security service said. Though North Korea probably lacks sophisticated technology to drop balloons or debris on specific targets, some experts say the South should shoot down incoming North balloons to protect key facilities despite the prospect of increased tensions or damage on the ground, as they might contain dangerous substances in future campaigns.

North Korea’s latest balloon launches came days after South Korea boosted its front-line broadcasts of K-pop songs and propaganda messages across the rivals’ heavily armed border. Their tit-for-tat Cold War-style campaigns are inflaming tensions, with the rivals threatening stronger steps and warning of grave consequences.

Seoul officials earlier said North Korea had used the direction of winds to fly balloons toward South Korea, but some of the past balloons had timers that were probably meant to pop the bags of trash in midair. The security service gave no further details about the rubbish found at the presidential compound. It refused to disclose whether President Yoon Suk-yeol was at the compound when North Korean balloons were flying over his office.

If the North is found to have used timers or any other device to deliberately dump trash on the presidential office, it would certainly invite a strong response by the South. But experts say that dropping balloons or debris from them on ground targets requires advanced technology, a capability that Pyongyang lacks.

“Some of [the hundreds of balloons] launched by North Korea landed on the presidential compound by coincidence. North Korea has no technology to precisely drop balloons at certain targets,” said Jung Chang Wook, head of the Korea Defense Study Forum think tank in Seoul.

Jung said that a GPS navigation device and a power system would need to be attached to a balloon to make it fall on certain sites, but North Korea doesn’t possess such balloons. He said the North probably wanted the balloons to fall on Seoul, about an hour’s drive from the border, after calculating factors such as the weight of the trash bags tied to the balloons, the volume of air in the balloons and the weather conditions.

Lee Illwoo, an expert with the Korea Defense Network in South Korea, said that strong winds in Seoul would also make it impossible for Pyongyang to target specific places with balloons.

South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said earlier Wednesday that North Korea had restarted floating balloons across the border, the 10th such launch since late May.

The more than 2,000 North Korean balloons discovered in South Korea in recent weeks carried wastepaper, scraps of cloth, cigarette butts and even manure. The North has said it was responding to South Korean activists scattering political leaflets across the border via their own balloons.

The North’s balloons haven’t caused major damage but have raised security jitters among people worried that Pyongyang could use such balloons to drop chemical and biological agents. The South has avoided shooting at the balloons, citing concerns about damage and the possibility that they might contain hazardous substances.

Lee of the Korea Defense Network said South Korea should fire at North Korean balloons in border areas because attacking them over the populous Seoul area would be too risky if they contained dangerous items such as biological agents. Jung said the South could use its recently developed laser weapons to intercept the balloons.

Experts say North Korea considers South Korean civilian leafleting activities a major threat to its efforts to stop the inflow of foreign news and maintain its authoritarian rule. In furious responses to past South Korean leafletting, North Korea destroyed an empty South Korean-built liaison office in its territory in 2020 and fired at incoming balloons in 2014.

Seoul said Sunday that it was ramping up its anti-Pyongyang propaganda broadcasts from its loudspeakers at all major sites along the land border because North Korea was continuing launches of trash-carrying balloons. South Korea last Thursday restarted its loudspeaker broadcasts for the first time in about 40 days in retaliation for North Korea’s balloon activities.

Observers say South Korean propaganda broadcasts can demoralize frontline North Korean troops and residents. In 2015, the North fired artillery rounds across the border in anger over South Korea’s restart of propaganda broadcasts, prompting the South to return fire.

South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff spokesperson Lee Sung Joon said the ongoing South Korean broadcasts include K-pop songs and news on South Korean economic development. South Korean media reported that the broadcasts also contained news on the recent defection of a senior North Korean diplomat and called the mine-planting work by North Korean soldiers at the border “hellish, slave-like” labor.

South Korea has an estimated 40 loudspeakers — 24 stationary and 16 mobile ones. Seoul’s military said Monday that it was fully operating the fixed loudspeakers and that it plans to use the mobile loudspeakers as well.

The South’s military has warned of unspecified stronger steps if the North continues its balloon campaigns. Pyongyang hasn’t made an official response to the South Korean propaganda broadcasts. But last week, Kim Yo Jong, the powerful sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, threatened new countermeasures against the South’s civilian leafleting as she warned that South Korean “scum” must be ready to pay “a gruesome and dear price” for their actions.

Kim writes for the Associated Press.