North Korea has been sending trash-filled balloons into South Korea. In response, activists are deploying balloons carrying K-pop music and K-drama shows.
An activist organisation named Fighters for a Free North Korea (FFNK) launched a series of helium balloons at dawn on Thursday. Videos revealed them drifting away, with some carrying large posters noticeable from a considerable distance while others carried smaller plastic packs.
These packs contained around 200,000 leaflets slamming Kim Jong Un, 5,000 USB drives with South Korean music videos and TV shows, and 2,000 one-dollar bills, according to FFNK.
Bands like FFNK have been dispatching these kinds of balloons for years, bearing items that are unlawful in the isolated totalitarian dictatorship – including grub, medication, radios, anti-Pyongyang leaflets, and pieces of South Korean news.
Last May, North Korea countered back by sending its own giant balloons south. These balloons included rubbish, soil, paper, and plastic, as well as what South Korean authorities called "filth."
Pyongyang alleged it dispatched a complete of 3,500 balloons, carrying 15 tonnes of rubbish, according to state media KCNA, citing North Korea's Vice Defense Minister Kim Kang Il.
The balloons began landing in the South last week, briefly interrupting flights and spurring officials to urge locals to stay indoors. As of Monday, the South Korean military had discovered around 1,000 balloons.
South Korean activists insist they will continue to launch balloons towards the North – even though it's forbidden by the government for several years.
FFNK head Park Sang-hak, a previous North Korean fugitive who abandoned the North and moved to the South decades ago, labelled the retaliatory materials "letters of truth and freedom.”
In his youth in North Korea, these balloons provided a uncommon view of the world outside, Park claimed. He remembered being in a community square in 1992 when "I heard a massive balloon up in the air."
"This rounded thing suddenly exploded with a loud thump, and then leaflets breadth from the sky," he stated. "I realized I shouldn't appear at these things, so I put one in my pocket and went to the lavatory to inspect it."
The leaflet he placed away featured accounts from North Korean deserters and their escapes, with a few of these defectors crossing into China before heading to the South.
Eight years later, Park left the North - reaching South Korea in 2000 and initiating his challenge to launch balloons across the line in 2006.
The leaflets he launches transmit information on the Kim household, including the assassination of Kim's half-brother Kim Jong Nam - in addition to pamphlets about South Korea's economic and political development, including visuals of Seoul's primary airport and the nation's combat planes.
"South Korea is not an American colony or a wasteland of humanity like I understood in North Korea," he told CNN on Wednesday. "We transferred cash, drugs, truth, and love, but to route rubbish and trash in response? That's inhuman and savage."
Meanwhile, certain South Korean citizens near the border are now uneasy.
"I endured through the Korean War and other difficulties, and I was concerned ... What if we have another war?" asked 84-year-old Song Kwang-ja, a resident of Yongin city, on Thursday.
"That reminded me of the past. I still get goosebumps thinking and addressing it," she remarked, adding that the balloons "felt like a juvenile joke."
This incident has further deteriorated strained relationships between the two countries. South Korea divulged this week it would bring back "all military activities" near the demarcation line – suspending a 2018 understanding sealed by both nations at a fleeting moment of relatively agreeable relations.
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The ongoing conflict between North and South Korea extends beyond trash-filled balloons, with South Korean activists also sending balloons filled with K-pop music and K-drama shows towards Asia.
This act of cultural diplomacy is a stark contrast to North Korea's use of balloons, which often carry garbage and negative propaganda.
