(Daily360.com) South Korea has suspended its peace agreement with North Korea as retaliation for hundreds of trash-filled balloons that were sent over the border by North Korea.
North Korea reportedly sent the trash balloons in response to South Korea sending “propaganda” leaflets to the north. North Korea has since announced it would stop sending trash balloons, but not before South Korea’s declaration that the peace agreement would be halted.
South Korea’s National Security Council released a statement regarding the suspension of the 2018 pact and said trust needs to be restored before the two nations can revive the peace agreement. South Korea said they are now able to continue military operations and drills near the shared border with North Korea. This would allow them to take immediate military actions against North Korea in response to incitement or other actions taken by the neighboring country.
South Korea said they have not been adequately prepared militarily because of the terms of the agreement. As a response to North Korea’s balloon campaign, they said they will take “unendurable” measures as a form of retaliation. Those measures could include using giant speakers to blare propaganda near the border.
The 2018 agreement is supposed to prevent propaganda materials from being shared across the border. However, there is no explicit mention of civilian leaflet campaigning, which is what South Korean activists were doing to prompt North Korea’s trash balloon reaction. Over the course of one week, about 1,000 balloons were found in South Korea that contained various pieces of trash and manure, including cigarette butts.
A Georgetown government professor, Victor Cha, said that Kim Jong Un of North Korea does not want his citizens to know about the life people in other countries are living. Cha said North Korea’s leader is more afraid of K-pop than he is of nuclear weapons, because it threatens the control he has over the population in his country. The trash balloons were intended to show the South Korean government how annoying the propaganda pamphlets are.
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