The launches were carried out a few days after North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a major defense agreement that observers say could encourage Kim to direct more provocations at North Korea. South.
According to a statement from the General Staff of the South Korean Armed Forces, North Korean balloons are moving south, and the military is closely monitoring North Korean movements, because winds from the north or northwest are expected, favorable to the launching of balloons.
In the statement, South Korean citizens are asked not to touch North Korean balloons and to report their location to military and police authorities. The Armed Forces did not say how they would react to new balloon launches.
Starting at the end of May, Pyongyang launched a series of balloons filled with manure, cigarette butts, rags, spent batteries and vinyl over several areas of South Korea. No highly dangerous materials were found.
North Korea said its balloon campaign was a retaliatory action against South Korean activists who flew political leaflets critical of its leadership to its side of the border.
Kim's influential sister, Kim Yo-jong, said on Friday that North Korea would resume its balloon campaign in retaliation against the new leaflet-dropping action by South Korean civilian groups.
A South Korean group said it had sent across the border 20 balloons with 300,000 propaganda leaflets, 5,000 USB sticks with South Korean pop songs and television series and one-dollar bills on Thursday night. North American.
"When we do something that we have been clearly warned not to do, it is natural that we will have to confront something that was avoidable," said Kim Yo-jong.
In reaction to North Korea's previous balloon campaign, the South Korean Armed Forces once again installed gigantic loudspeakers along the border on June 9, for the first time in six years, and resumed broadcasting propaganda against the North Korean regime. Korean.
The broadcasts reportedly included famous songs by BTS, the K-pop (South Korean 'pop') sensation band, such as "Butter" and "Dynamite", weather forecasts and news about Samsung, the largest South Korean company, as well such as criticism of Pyongyang's missile program and its ban on foreign videos.
North Korea considers South Korea's large-scale news broadcasts and civil leaflet distribution campaigns to be serious provocations, as it prohibits access to foreign news to the majority of its 26 million inhabitants.
According to Seoul, Pyongyang reacted to previous South Korean broadcasts with loudspeakers and civil actions involving the launch of balloons by opening fire on the other side of the border, which led South Korea to respond.
This morning, South Korea, the United States and Japan issued a joint statement strongly condemning the increasing military cooperation between Russia and North Korea.
According to the statement, interactions between Pyongyang and Moscow constitute a "serious concern" for efforts to promote peace on the Korean Peninsula, for the global non-proliferation regime and for support for the Ukrainian people, confronted since February 2022 with an invasion of Russia.
At a meeting in Pyongyang last Wednesday, Kim Jong-un and Putin reached an agreement under which each of their respective countries will provide assistance to the other in the event of an attack, and undertake to reinforce other forms of cooperation.
According to observers, the agreement represents the strongest relationship between the two countries since the end of the Cold War. The United States and its allies believe that North Korea has provided Russia with much-needed conventional weapons for its war in Ukraine, in exchange for military and economic aid.
The statement from Seoul, Washington and Tokyo indicates that the three countries reiterate their intention to strengthen diplomatic and security cooperation to confront North Korean threats and avoid an escalation of the situation, adding that the United States' commitments to the defense of Korea of the South and Japan "remain armored".
Last Saturday, an American nuclear-powered aircraft carrier arrived in South Korea for a tripartite Seoul-Washington-Tokyo military exercise, which is scheduled to begin this month.
North Korea has already called these joint military maneuvers by the United States an invasion rehearsal and responded by carrying out new missile tests, arguing that Washington's hostility forced it to develop nuclear weapons in self-defense.
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