North Korea stops dumping garbage over South Korea

North Korea announced that it would no longer send balloons carrying garbage across the border into South Korea, but said it would resume doing so if anti-North Korean leaflets were again flown across the border from the South.

South Korea has enough experience with how unpleasant and laborious it is to collect the garbage after Pyongyang sent 15 tons of it in 3,500 balloons, the North’s deputy defense minister, Kim Kang Il, said on state media broadcaster KCNA.

Seoul said it would take “unbearable” measures against North Korea for sending the garbage balloons across the border, including loud propaganda from loudspeakers directed against the North.

The statement from President Yoon Suk Yeol’s office followed a meeting of the country’s National Security Council in response to Seoul’s claims that Pyongyang had sent more than 700 balloons laden with garbage across the heavily fortified border to spite its neighbor.

The Council condemned the balloons and the simultaneous disruption of GPS reception as an “irrational act of provocation”.

A senior official in Yoon’s office told reporters that Seoul has not ruled out resuming loudspeaker blasts, which were halted in 2018 after a summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.