What do North Korea’s trash balloons really mean?

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Manure. Cigarette butts. Pieces of cloth. Used batteries. Even, it seems, diapers. In the last week, North Korea floated hundreds of large balloons to throw all that garbage across your rival South Koreain an old-fashioned, Cold War-style provocation, in a way that the isolated dictatorship has rarely used in recent years.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s powerful sister confirmed Wednesday that North Korea sent the balloons and accompanying garbage bags, saying they were deployed to comply with recent threat of his country of “spreading piles of waste paper and dirt” in South Korea in response to aerial leaflet campaigns launched by South Korean activists.

Experts say the trash balloon campaign is intended to stoke division in South Korea by the hard-line policy of the conservative Seoul government towards the North. They also say to expect new kinds of provocations in the coming months as the North tries to meddle in the US presidential election.

Below we explain what does it consist on North Korea’s balloon launches.

What has happened?

Since Tuesday night, some 260 balloons launched from North Korea have been discovered throughout South Korea.

However, there is no apparent danger. The Army said that a initial investigation showed that garbage tied to balloons does not contain any dangerous substances such as chemical, biological or radioactive materials. There have been no reports of damage on the ground.

In 2016, North Korean balloons carrying trash, CDs and propaganda leaflets damaged cars and other property in South Korea. In 2017, South Korea again found a suspected North Korean balloon with pamphlets. This week, no pamphlets found on North Korean balloons.

Balloons carrying propaganda pamphlets and other items were some of the most common tools of psychological warfare that the two Koreas launched at each other during the Cold War.

Others have been the loudspeakers at full volume, the gigantic fences and electronic signs installed on the fortified border of both countries and propaganda radio broadcasts. In recent years, the two Koreas have agreed stop these activitiesbut sometimes they resume them when tensions rise.

What does the North want?

The launching of balloons by the North is part of a recent series of provocationsincluding the failed launch of a spy satellite and the test launches of about 10 alleged short-range missiles this week.

Experts say that the leader of the North, Kim Jong-unwill try to increase tensions before the american elections to try to help the former president donald trump to return to the White House and rekindle the high-risk diplomacy they briefly enjoyed during the latter’s term.

“Balloon launches are not a weak action at all,” said Kim Taewoo, former president of South Korea’s government-funded Institute for National Unification. “It’s as if North Korea sent the message that next time you can send balloons with biological weaponsand chemicals powdered”.

Koh Yu-hwan, a professor emeritus at Dongguk University in Seoul, said North Korea probably determined that the balloon campaign is a most effective way to force the government of South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol to take drastic measures against the distribution of pamphlets by the South.

“The objective is make the South Korean people uncomfortable and raise the public voice that the government’s policy toward North Korea is wrong,” Koh said.

North Korea is extremely sensitive to the pamphlets that South Korean activists occasionally launch across the border with their own balloons, because they contain information about the outside world and criticism of the authoritarian regime of the Kim dynasty. Most of the 26 million inhabitants of the North have little access to foreign news.

In 2020, North Korea’s patience with civil pamphlet campaigns it got to the point that flew through the air a liaison office built by South Korea on its territory.

Read the garbage

North Korea is one of the countries more hermetic in the world, and foreign experts are busy collecting any fragmentary information from the country. But Koh said there won’t be much meaningful information in the landfills because North Korea wouldn’t have sent no important objects tied to the balloons.

If the manure is indeed from animals, examination may show what fodder is given to livestock in North Korea, while general household garbage can provide insight into the circulation of consumer products in North Korea.

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But observers say outside experts can get that information more easily from North Korean defectorstheir contacts in North Korea and Chinese border cities, and the state publications North Koreans.

What are the implications?

Although the North’s balloon activities may intensify public calls in South Korea to stop distributing leaflets against North Korea and avoid unnecessary tensions, it is unclear whether and how aggressively the South Korean government can urge civilian groups to refrain from sending balloons toward North Korea.

In 2023, the Constitutional Court of South Korea annulled a controversial law that criminalized the sending of propaganda leaflets against Pyongyang, considering it a excessive restriction of freedom of expression. “From Pyongyang’s perspective, this is a tit-for-tat and even contained action for Seoul to prevent leaflets against the Kim regime from being sent to the North.”

However, it will be difficult for democratic South Korea to comply“given continuing legal disputes over the freedom of citizens and NGOs to send information to North Korea,” said Leif-Eric Easley, a professor at Ewha University in Seoul.

“The immediate danger of military escalation is not high” he said, “but recent events show how sensitive and potentially vulnerable that is the Kim regime to information operations”.

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