South Korea Finds Itself Powerless To Stop Excrement-Filled Balloons in Apparent Public Relations Win for the North

North Korea has discovered that dropping manure over South Korea earns far more publicity than test-firing more missiles and artillery shells.After shrugging off missile-testing with pro forma denunciations, South Korea has responded with about the most strongly worded condemnation it’s ever mustered to the indignity of North Korea firing 260 balloons carrying garbage, including the excrement of cows, pigs, and possibly even people.Darkly, the South’s unification ministry vowed the government would “take all measures that North Korea cannot endure” if the North repeated such “provocative acts.” The North, said the unification ministry, would bear “all responsibility for what will take place afterward.”There was no clue, however, as to what South Korea would really do that would effectively retaliate for the insult of dumping excrement over the South. Short of shelling the North’s sites for launching balloons, the South was essentially helpless in the face of such an indignity.North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, had nothing to say publicly about the excrement attack, but he was assumed to have endorsed it. A representative of the International Coalition for Human Rights in North Korea, Nam Sin-u, told the Sun that nothing of that magnitude could happen in North Korea without Mr. Kim’s full approval even though his younger sister, Kim Yo-jong, likely had a hand in the attack.Mr. Kim’s younger sister Kim Yo-jong clearly exulted in the attack — and the South’s response. South Korea’s Yonhap News quoted her as promising the North would deluge the South with garbage “dozens of times” as often as South Korean activists fired balloons over the North. They were, she said, “sincere presents” in response to demands for freedom of expression in North Korea, which assiduously blocks all signs of dissent.The North’s balloon attack appeared as a direct response to more than 300 balloons fired from South Korea by long-time balloonist activist and leader of Fighters for Free North Korea, Park Sang-hak, who initiated the exchange by firing off 300 balloons. They carried leaflets exposing the iniquities of the Pyongyang regime, including the Kim dynasty founded by Kim Jong-un’s grandfather, Kim Il-sung, installed by the Soviet Union in 1945 after serving as an officer in the Soviet army.Mr. Nam said the balloons fired from the South also were laden with recordings of South Korean drama and K-Pop that’s extremely popular in North Korea despite the risks of being caught watching or listening to it.Mr. Park now is free to fire balloons into North Korea after the current conservative South Korean president lifted a law banning balloon attacks on the North. The previous leftist president, Moon Jae-in, had pushed through the law while courting Mr. Kim, who wound up ignoring his pleas for reconciliation.Mr. Park has denied, however, that he will seek retribution in the form of firing manure to North from South. Rather, he plans to send messages of “truth and love” when he conducts his next launch of 200,000 balloons. Right now he’s got instruments testing the wind currents for when will be the propitious moment for launching the balloons with maximum impact.Mr. Nam, however, was still not impressed by President Yoon’s tolerance of balloon launches. He said that Mr. Yoon had been essentially “neutral” in his view of the balloon launches while failing to respond effectively to serious North Korean threats.Most recently, Mr. Kim was reported ordering the firing of 600-millimeter rockets in retaliation for South Korea test-firing ten short-range missiles Then, in a separate warning carried by the North’s Korean Central News Agency, Pyongyang warned of dire but unspecified possible retaliation for reconnaissance flights flown by American planes south of the North-South line.The idea, said KCNA, was to show “what consequences” might befall the Americans and South Koreans “if they provoke us” — an almost routine response that could not possibly capture the same attention as the North Korean garbage attack.Correction: Kim Il-sung was the grandfather of Kim Jong-un. An earlier version misstated the family genealogy.

South Korea Finds Itself Powerless To Stop Excrement-Filled Balloons in Apparent Public Relations Win for the North

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