SEOUL, South Korea — It’s not the cross-border barrage South Koreans have been fearing, but a balloon carrying a bag of trash floated over from North Korea and hit the presidential compound, security officials said Wednesday.
Seoul’s Presidential Security Service said in a telephone call that it had tracked the balloon in real time as the winds carried it across its nuclear-armed neighbor's border, until it eventually landed in the presidential compound in the South Korean capital.
It posed no danger, the agency said.
Balloons emerged as a new and messy weapon of war this year. Since May, North Korea has been floating thousands of balloons with bags of trash attached to them, which have become a new source of tension between the two Koreas. Some have been filled with bottles, old batteries and even manure, but more recently they have just been carrying wastepaper.
Pyongyang has said the launches are a tit-for-tat response to activists and defectors who have for years sent propaganda leaflets via balloons. Others have contained dollar drugs and painkillers like acetaminophen.
South Korea’s military is “closely monitoring North Korean movements,” Defense Minister Shin Won-sik told the Japanese newspaper Yomiuiri in an interview published Wednesday.
He added that it was possible that North Korea’s "military could fire at the balloons being sent by South Korean activists or the source where the balloons are launched."
However, the likelihood of Pyongyang's military detecting the exact times and locations of the South Korean balloons was low, the Defense Ministry told NBC News.
North Korea floated another round of balloons Sunday, which South Korea called vulgar and shameful. It responded by blaring K-pop through loudspeakers across the border.
“We are broadcasting K-pop, happy lifestyle [in South Korea], the development of South Korea and so on through the loudspeaker to North Korea,” Seoul’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a briefing Tuesday. Separately, spokesperson Lee Sung-joon said it expects the broadcasts to stir up domestic agitation and encourage more defections from North Korea.
The broadcasts, the first of its kind in more than a month, have previously included K-pop songs; weather forecasts; news about Samsung, the biggest South Korean company; and criticism of the North Korean missile program.
The balloon, which landed away from the main presidential office, was the first one to have landed in the presidential compound, raising security concerns about key buildings. Officials did not say whether it was manually guided; the Joint Chiefs of Staff said it was carried by westerly winds.
South Korea has warned people to refrain from touching the objects in the trash bags.
Shin, South Korea’s defense minister, said Pyongyang "may also respond by burying land mines, dissemination of propaganda leaflets using drones, disruption of the GPS, cyberattack and so on."
Belarusian Foreign Minister Maxim Ryzhenkov arrived in the North Korean capital Tuesday.
Both countries are allies of Russia, which has become more diplomatically isolated since it invaded Ukraine two years ago.
North Korea is eager to boost ties with Belarus to "open a new era," state media KCNA quoted Foreign Minister Choe Son Hui as saying Wednesday, a day after their meeting.
Russian President Vladimir Putin made a rare state visit last month, when he and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un signed a mutual defense treaty.
Tensions between the Koreas have been escalating for months, with Kim accelerating weapons testing and North Korean soldiers repeatedly crossing the border briefly, prompting warning shots.
Kim’s sister, Kim Yo Jang, blasted South Korea this month for "dirty leaflets" that were found in the border and other areas of North Korea, hinting at the eventual resumption of balloon launches.
Satellite imagery has also shown North Korea building a wall-like structure along parts of the North Korean side of the demarcation zone, a 2.5-mile-thick buffer zone, half on each side of the border line.
Kim this year suspended military accords the two nations agreed to in 2018. As well as sending the balloons, he also restored border posts.
South Korea resumed aerial surveillance near the border, which it said was in retaliation for North Korea’s satellite launch in November.
Stella Kim reported from Seoul and Mithil Aggarwal from Hong Kong.
