North Korea says it is halting sending trash balloons to South Korea after hundreds more float over border

CNN —

North Korea said it was stopping sending trash-filled balloons to South Korea after Seoul reported hundreds more airborne waste deliveries floating across the border.

North Korea’s vice-defense minister Kim Kang Il said that the country will “temporarily halt dropping trash over the border,” after claiming to have sent a total of 15 tonnes of trash to its neighbor, according to his statement released by state media KCNA on Sunday.

Kim said the balloon were “strictly a responsive act” to South Korea’s years-long practice of sending balloons with anti-North Korea leaflets the other way.

“We’ve let the South Koreans experience enough of how dirty it feels and how much joint effort it takes to clean up spread-out rubbish,” Kim said.

A South Korean official pledged his country would take “unendurable measures” against North Korea for sending more trash balloons this weekend, which will be “specified in the coming days.”

The official from the presidential office added that the government “will not rule out the issue of resuming [playing] loudspeakers” that used to blast propaganda across the demilitarized zone, but had been turned off since a military agreement was signed in 2018.

South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said “no substances harmful to safety” were found among the hundreds more balloons that reached the country on Saturday evening – unlike just a few days ago when used toilet paper was found in some of the about 150 balloons that crossed the border.

The latest photos released by the JCS show a large sack containing what appears to be paper left on the roadside, while other images show officers inspecting the garbage strewn on the ground. Others showed burned-out cigarette butts.

According to images