Seoul has urged the public to avoid and report any balloons from North Korea, which have been sent carrying trash and excrement across the border.

This follows North Korea’s recent dispatch of hundreds of such balloons, described by South Korea’s Defense Minister Shin Won-sik as “unimaginably petty and low-grade behaviour.”

The balloons are purportedly in retaliation for anti-Pyongyang leaflets sent by defectors and activists in South Korea.

Despite a 2020 South Korean law criminalizing the sending of these leaflets, activists have continued their campaigns, The Guardian reported.

That year, North Korea cut off official communications with the South and destroyed an inter-Korean liaison office.

In 2023, South Korea’s constitutional court overturned the 2020 law, deeming it a violation of free speech.

Written by B.C. Begley