North Korea announces it will no longer send balloons filled with garbage to the South

North Korea will temporarily stop sending balloons carrying garbage to South Korea, state media KCNA reported on Sunday, citing a statement by the country’s deputy defense minister.

However, North Korea will resume the action if the South sends anti-North Korean leaflets in the other direction, it said.

South Korea, for its part, responded on Sunday that it would take “unbearable” measures against North Korea because the country was sending garbage balloons across the border. This could include blaring propaganda from loudspeakers in North Korea.

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

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

Seoul did not rule out resuming loudspeaker blasts, which it halted in 2018 after a rare summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, a senior official in Yoon’s office told reporters.

The democratic South and the communist North are technically still at war, as the 1950-1953 Korean War ended in an armistice rather than a peace treaty. Seoul is a staunch U.S. ally, whose sophisticated military regularly conducts exercises with the U.S., while Pyongyang is developing missile and nuclear technology that Seoul and Washington say violate U.N. resolutions.