Icky balloons filled with trash and poop are floating over the border from North Korea to South Korea. Here are the key points:
- North Korea attached plastic bags full of gross junk like batteries, bottles, and feces to balloons
- Over 260 of these smelly balloons have drifted into South Korean towns near the border
- This seems to be payback for activists in the South sending anti-North Korea leaflets and media over the border
- South Korea is warning people to stay inside and away from the gross balloons
Why would North Korea do something so disgusting? Let’s take a closer look.
A Balloon Battle Between the Koreas
For a long time, North and South Korea have been playing a bizarre game of sending stuff to each other via balloons over the border.
Activist groups in South Korea often attach rude leaflets mocking North Korea’s leaders and prohibited media, such as movies, books, and songs, to balloons and send them drifting northward. Their goal is to poke fun at the North’s rulers and expose people to banned outside information.
North Korea hates having their leaders insulted and people seeing unauthorized content. So, their response has been to send their balloons filled with trash and waste back into South Korea. Gross!
This is tit-for-tat action, a North Korean official warned earlier, vowing they would scatter mounds of waste paper and filth back over the border. And that’s exactly what they’ve done.
High Tensions Between the Two Koreas
Although the Korean War ended in 1953, North and South Korea are still technically at War since no peace treaty was signed. Relations between the two countries swing between friendlier periods and times of high tension and conflict.
In 2010, North Korea even fired artillery at a South Korean island, killing soldiers and civilians. More recently, both sides had engaged in friendlier talks and meetings between their leaders. But that’s all gone sour again.
“Relations between the two Koreas are pretty much as bad as they have ever been,” says one expert. Sending rude balloons filled with trash and human waste is the latest example of rising tensions.
An Escalating Battle of Balloon Propaganda
Both countries are now rapidly advancing their abilities to surveil each other using spy satellites. South Korea plans to have five military satellites in orbit by 2025, while North Korea claims it already has one transmitting pictures of the White House and other U.S. sites, though it hasn’t released any proof.
Meanwhile, the two sides are escalating their back-and-forth propaganda balloon campaigns, despite South Korea’s previous passing of a law to ban the leaflet balloons before recently revoking them.
Most experts now view the balloon barrages more as an annoying provocation than a real military threat. However, South Korea is still urging residents to avoid areas where the messy balloons may land, warning them that more are coming.
Some analysts worry North Korea’s balloon payloads could eventually contain chemical or biological weapons, not just gross litter and feces. Only time will tell if this bizarre cross-border battle of balloons remains more of a childish nuisance or escalates into something more disturbing.
So, in conclusion, the two Koreas have taken their trash-talking to a gross new level by literally sending balloons full of trash and poo over each other’s borders. What do you think about this utterly bizarre form of conflict between the divided Korean nations?
The screenshot is taken from – nydailynews.com
