South Korea suspends peace agreement with North Korea over garbage balloons

SEOUL, South Korea — South Korea said Monday it would suspend a rapprochement agreement with North Korea to punish the country for launching garbage balloons, even though the North had already said it would halt its balloon campaign.

For several days, North Korea launched hundreds of balloons to drop garbage and dung over South Korea, an angry response to earlier leafleting campaigns among South Korean civilians. On Sunday, South Korea said it would take “unbearable” retaliatory measures in response, before North Korea abruptly announced it would stop flying balloons across the border.

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On Monday, the South Korean president’s National Security Council said it had decided to suspend a 2018 inter-Korean agreement aimed at ending hostilities on the front lines until mutual trust between the two Koreas is restored, according to the president’s office.

The Security Council said the suspension would allow South Korea to resume military exercises near its border with North Korea and respond effectively and immediately to North Korean provocations. It said a proposal for the suspension would be submitted to the Cabinet Council for approval on Tuesday.

Observers say South Korea needs the suspension of the agreement to resume broadcasting anti-Pyongyang propaganda, K-pop songs and foreign news from loudspeakers at the border. They say such broadcasts have previously harmed the tightly controlled North, where most of its 26 million residents are officially denied access to foreign news.

The 2018 agreement, reached during a brief period of reconciliation between then-liberal South Korean President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, requires the two Koreas to cease all hostile acts against each other, including propaganda broadcasts and leaflet campaigns.

But the agreement does not clearly state that distributing leaflets to civilians should also be banned. This has allowed South Korean activists to continue to launch balloons to drop anti-Pyongyang leaflets, USB sticks with South Korean dramas and world news, and U.S. dollars into North Korea. Enraged by such leafleting campaigns, North Korea has already shot at incoming balloons and destroyed an unoccupied South Korean-built inter-Korean liaison office in the North.

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The 2018 agreement was already in danger of collapsing. Tensions escalated after North Korea launched a spy satellite last November. Both Koreas then took steps that violated the agreement: South Korea resumed aerial surveillance, North Korea restored border guard posts.

Since last Tuesday, a total of around 1,000 North Korean balloons have been discovered in various parts of South Korea, transporting fertilizer, cigarette butts, scraps of fabric and waste paper. According to the South Korean military, no dangerous substances were found.

On Sunday evening, Kim Kang Il, North Korea’s deputy defense minister, said the North would end its balloon campaign because it had “made South Koreans feel uncomfortable enough.” He said North Korea would resume ballooning if South Korean activists resumed their own balloon activities.

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Experts say North Korea’s balloon campaign, reportedly the first of its kind in seven years, is intended to create a divide in South Korea because the current conservative government has a hard-line North Korea policy. Since 2022, North Korea has dramatically expanded its weapons tests in what analysts say is an attempt to strengthen its nuclear capacity and increase its influence in future diplomacy with the United States.