North Korea News Podcast by NK News - North Korean trash balloons, Kim Yo Jong snark and Seoul’s loudspeaker threats

Episode Date: June 4, 2024

North Korea has launched around 1,000 balloons toward the South since last week, each carrying around 22 pounds (10 kilograms) of waste, including cigarette butts and manure.  NK News CEO Chad O’Carroll (@chadocl) and Senior Analytic Correspondent Colin Zwirko (@ColinZwirko) sit down in the studio to discuss the DPRK’s unusual launches and its anger at […]

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Good morning. Well, there's been a lot of stuff going on in the inter-Korean space, so let's talk about what North Korea has been sending here and then a little bit about what local South Korean citizens have been sending across to North Korea. Chad, you want to kick us off? Yeah, so about three weeks ago, a South Korean human rights activist called Park Sung-hak launched 300,000 leaflets into North Korea from Incheon. And the thing was that this followed, I believe he invited media or there was some distribution of photos to media he does often invite media and enjoy media attention yeah and those photos

reveal these large vinyl banners attached to the balloons which had very offensive things to say about the north korean leadership and they're cooking that South Korea's government deeming the Moon Jae-in era prohibition on leaflet launching as being unconstitutional late last year in November and so you had a government action which made it much easier legal for civil society to launch these balloons into north korea and the north koreans have routinely complained to south korea about this but this time they replied with a very stern warning that basically wasn't it wasn't even a warning just said we will respond and the vice defense minister released a statement from north korea saying we will release trash as a nuisance to make you understand how hard it is to pick this all up all over the country

right and now in previous years they've tried to shoot those balloons down haven't they the ones coming from south yeah 2014 i think it was there was anti-aircraft firing at the anti-aircraft guns firing it's one of the launch locations yeah but yeah basically it's a new approach yeah really i want to talk about that as well like chad finished just about the change in approach yeah so the north koreans launched over two different days hundreds of maybe thousands of balloons containing trash debris perhaps manure as well they were like 10 to 15 kilograms in weight each. Wow, okay.

Being dropped. And I saw it was kind of like a combination of what, litter and cigarette butts and... Trash, feces was in the report from the UNC, cigarette butts, yeah. I saw somebody made a comment somewhere that it would be interesting if it is human feces to, you know, it would unwittingly provide some interesting information on North Korea's dietary, you know, or health of, what do you call it? This was the most interesting aspect to you, Jacko, the whole saga. Well, no, actually, the second most interesting one, but I just thought that.

Sample size of one. Yes. Well, it depends on how many of those balloons have the human feces in it. But, yeah, it could be investigated. And the South Korean government, of course, sent out emergency notifications to telephones saying to people, if you see this, don't approach it. Do not touch it under any circumstances. I guess they were fearing contamination or something.

Sure. That was on the very first night last week in late May. I think. Sure. That was on the very first night last week in late May. Late at night, we started getting those very loud alerts on your phones in South Korea that you cannot turn off. Very alarming. I didn't get any.

Yeah, it's depending on where you're located. But the initial warnings had things like wartime alert, all these kind of very alarming wording as the titles of these alerts. And then I think the ones in the next round over the weekend were not as severe in terms of their warnings, more like cautious, caution citizens or something like that. Yeah, and that second wave there, which I think was on a Saturday evening, a friend of ours and a friend of the podcast was sitting in an airplane on a tarmac

and that plane couldn't leave because the airspace was closed over, so to the balloon so it's a very much a nuisance in in more ways than one not just cleaning up the stuff on the ground but yeah if it shuts down airspace then that's i don't know it almost feels a bit like gray zone warfare in a way like it's not an act of war per se but you know if it can shut down airspace that's don't forget that parkinson huck was launching from inchon which is where the airport is ah now but inchon's quite big was he wasn't on the island where the airport is i assume he was not as close as close as possible yeah maybe on one of the adjacent islands but yeah it could be a nuisance you know south korea is not treating it as a as a at this point south korea is not treating it as some wartime attack.

But now I'm confusing maybe what is an official statement and what's kind of out there in the ether. But it is being treated as serious. And like you said, cautious at the beginning about what it contains. They've come out and said it didn't contain anything dangerous, no toxic chemicals or substances. But I think that was a prudent approach at the beginning. You don't know what's coming over. or substances but i think it's that was a prudent approach at the beginning you don't know what's going on yeah but didn't the south korean government also say that it was going to suspend the inter-korean military agreement of 2018 in the wake of this what i guess six months after

north korea decided or announced that it was doing the exact same thing well let's back up there was the south koreans that warned over and over and over for the last 18 months or so that they were thinking about withdrawing from it and then partially withdrew from it due to the totally unrelated action of North Korea launching a satellite last year which then triggered the North Koreans to fully withdraw from it and now we have the South Koreans fully withdrawing from it so yeah make of that what you will and our colleague Jung Min Kim just told me just a minute ago that what that means is that what it means for South Korea to back out of it on their end fully. I'm not sure how official that is on paper, but it means that we might see more military drills up near the border, near the maritime border, which is actually a whole other subject, but also included in this balloon saga last week where the defense ministry of North Korea is warning about what

it perceives as violations by South Korea of the maritime border. That's pretty complicated right now, but we're definitely watching the maritime border as a place where the lines are unclear about what North Korea considers their line. Is this in the East and West Sea? Mostly West. Mostly in the West Sea. Okay, where there's five islands. Where there are islands. Pyeongchang-do and Yongpyeong-do. Right, gosh. And throw into the mix there also that South Korea has, did it warn or did it say it would, set up loudspeakers to blast propaganda messages into North Korea again? Yeah, so that's one of the responses that is being mulled at the moment by South Korea.

So South Korea has an independent activist fly balloons over. Yes. There's no evidence that that's related to the government, just so we make that clear. Right. Then North Korea says we will send government-led operation to send thousands of balloons across the border. Then North Korea does that. Kim Yo-jong, the leader's sister, comes out with a very mocking statement where she mockingly claims that it was by independent North Koreans and that she can't stop them, trying to mirror the South Korean statement about that.

Right. Oh, she's good at the mocking statements. Yeah. But again, in the same statement and then in a later North Korean statement, they made it clear again that these are government-led operations. So the government has sent a bunch of balloons to South Korea. But right now, the South Korean government has not indicated any plans to then escalate to that same level to have a government-led operation to send balloons into North Korea. Right now they're talking about loudspeakers at the border, which, Chad, what is that? That mostly will affect soldiers, North Korean soldiers, and then there's some farmers along the border.

Yeah. And it's historically been a bit of a thorn in North Korea's side when those loudspeakers are on. They get very upset about it. And what's being played in those? I actually don't know what has recently been played. I know that they often play weather reports, warnings of storms and things like that. But also there's K-pop in there and there's, I guess, news broadcasts and things.

But it's less of the stuff. Back in the 1990s... Can you imagine the farmers just suddenly enjoying K-pop? I don't know if any... It is hard to imagine, yeah. But South Korea has tried to strip out the propaganda messages that it used to use back in the 80s and 90s

where it would directly appeal to soldiers to defect and come across the border. And just on that note there of propaganda, I'm interested to see that so far in all the reports of the balloons coming over from North Korea, none of them seems to contain any propaganda leaflets. And I really thought that they might go back to that, especially that given that in 2019, after the failure of Hanoi, and when the 2020 summer, June, right, when that relation between the two Koreas had broken down, that North Korea printed a large bundle of new leaflets

and said, we're going to send them to you. It didn't in the end. It just warned that it did, but they are printed. We saw the photograph of that. Yeah, you know, what else is in the photos was a bunch of cigarette butts. Ah, right. Okay, so it just sent the butts but kept the leaflets. And I wonder whether this is maybe a sign

that North Korea just is not interested in trying to persuade the South Korean people of anything anymore. Like that used to be for decades, that was its thing, was trying to convince the South Korean citizenry to rise up against the leadership. The fact that now it's only sending trash

and no leaflets seems to suggest that North Korea doesn't see a return on investment in leafleting anymore. Yeah, I totally agree. And probably that has a lot to do with the policy shift on unification, making it very official that we have no interest in. But also you can interpret that as meaning they don't think they can change anyone's mind. Right. And just on that note there about the change of policy on unification, Right. And just on that note there about the change of policy on unification,

over the weekend, the North Koreans released a statement saying that they were going to temporarily pause the sending of the balloons. And in that statement, the word Gukyong Nomoro, or over the national border, was used. And that just made my eyes widen because in 70 plus years, North Korea has never referred to the inter-Korean demilitarized zone as a national border. And just to call it Gukyong is to call it a national border and to signal very strongly to South Korea that, hey, we've said you're a separate country and this is a national border. That's a good catch. We'll probably see that in the constitutional revision coming up whenever they say that they will redefine the borders. They'll probably start describing it like that. Yeah, so this goes on that list of evidence that North Korea is really strongly signaling that South Korea is no longer part of the Korean nation anymore. Yeah, and I wanted to talk about how the North Koreans are signaling very interesting things about the leaflets from South Korea. So as Chad and you mentioned, up until recently,

the understanding in South Korea was that there is this looming threat of an artillery retaliation from North Korea. They've been explicit about that, I'm pretty sure. I don't remember if Kim Yo-jong was explicit about that back in June 2020. Wasn't there something about threatening some kind of artillery attack and that's why South Korea took it so seriously? Oh, yeah. That's right. June 2020. Wasn't there something about threatening some kind of artillery attack and that's why South Korea took it so seriously? Oh, yeah.

That's right. They were moving. Weren't they moving? That was when they moved. Kim Jong-un said he was going to move KPA forces back into the border. And then it suddenly just stopped. South Korea signaled that they would crack down. They passed a law within a very, very short period

after Kim Yo-jong's statement, as I recall. I don't remember the timing on that, but definitely. So this kind of timeline we have coming in the last couple of weeks, we have before. So whenever the North Korean vice defense minister warned that they would send trash across the border, he said something that South Korea sending balloons across the border, quote, is a dangerous provocation that can be utilized for a specific military purpose. That implies that the North Korean military still infers these balloons as a threat that's worthy of some kind of kinetic response. But then Kim Yo-jong, in her statement, she said clearly that the only retaliation they were considering

for South Korean balloons coming to North Korea was North Korea sending trash balloons to South Korea. And I thought that that really opened up this opportunity for a South Korean government to then say, okay, we will come to your level and we will send USBs and SD cards and movies and information about the outside world, which I think is interesting for North Korea to take that tact because they see this as the most threatening thing to their rule, the Kim family, is outside information. So I've been kind of tracking the statements coming out of North Korea. And the most recent one was a KCNA statement from June 2nd. No, this was a Kim Kang-yeo, another vice minister statement from June 2nd. And he said, if the ROK clans resume anti-DPRK leaflet scattering, we will correspond to it by intensively scattering waste paper and rubbish 100 times. So again, most recently, just two days ago, the North Korean military saying our response will be balloons for balloons.

So I still think even though the South Korean government is saying right now we're mulling loudspeakers, even though the South Korean government is saying right now we're mulling loudspeakers, I do wonder if the door has not been opened up to sending a giant information warfare campaign into North Korea. By the South Korean government, not by civic groups. Exactly. On a scale that a civic group couldn't achieve, with a success that a civic group couldn't achieve. But I think, I don't know, I want to know what Chad's opinion on this is, but maybe the South Korean government doesn't see that as a good bargain. And right now, I think one of our colleagues is working on talking to South Koreans out on the street and to find out what they think. Is that a good bargain? Right. Can we try to change minds in North Korea if that means we're going to see a whole lot more trash coming down

on our heads? Yeah, I think there's a few variables here that are worth considering. One is in the event that North Korea does continue or South Korea does what you're saying, and there's a case where a payload comes down and kills a schoolgirl on her way to Yuchuan. North Korea or South Korea? In either country.

In either country. It could certainly happen, right? There was a picture of a bundle landing and smashing a windshield, a parked car in South Korea. Yeah. What if that was a moving car? What if someone died, you know?

Right. And you just think back to the anti-Americanism when there were those two schoolgirls who were trampled by the tank, right? Like something small like this could turn this into like a burning news agenda item and put a lot of political pressure on yoon to do something or conversely be used by north korea's propaganda apparatus to justify legitimize a real escalation so there's that there's that and then even if uh the south korean government is trying to take control of the situation and even if they're like really you know there are

other means they can stop these balloonists even without changing the law through policing activities, intelligence, blah, blah, blah. I was with one balloon launcher back in 2020 when Moon passed the law and I accompanied this balloon launcher as a journalist while he evaded scrutiny of police parked outside his residence. And, you know, we thought the whole way to the border we were going to get stopped and intercepted. No one did. Wow. So that's another variable is like if the government wants to control this, it can't 100% control it.

And there's a chance that someone like Pak Sung-hak or another activist might go out there, take advantage of this being a hot news agenda item and send something even more quote unquote provocative to stimulate another response so yeah i think it's um there's there's ways it could play out in unpredictable manners meaning do you think it's more prudent for south korea not to because i guess it would be considered an escalation, even though North Korea already escalated to the level of government-led balloon operation. Yeah, so I've seen a few things on Twitter about this, like some people saying South Korea shouldn't back down. And also, Yoon has a responsibility as the leader of the state to protect, deter.

At the same time, I spoke to some within the military here from the u.s side who want to avoid escalation at all costs so there are definitely competing interests and i think you know it's possible that we sometimes do fear north korea responses so much that many take options off the table when there have been cases in the past where north korea has been shown to actually be quite unmotivated to really really escalate so back in the landmine incident we were talking about this yesterday there was an exchange of artillery so north korea fired what just one shell across to south korea south kore by firing, I think, scores or maybe even hundreds of shells back on a North Korean mountain and had the loudspeakers on in response.

And North Korea very, very quickly came to talks. And I was discussing with someone who was involved in the talks yesterday or close to the talks who said that the North Korean negotiators sent there were very, very, very eager to stop those loudspeakers and end the crisis that was emerging. So, yeah. Well, that's a thing we'll be certainly looking at in the near future. One more thing.

I also wonder if it's really in the South Korean government's interest to try to change minds on a big scale like that, which is usually the work of activist groups. Do they really want to create some sort of chaos moment in North Korea? Maybe not. This crossed my mind yesterday when someone was making the point that

North Korea has done a government action with these leaflets, whereas in South Korea it's civil society. But of course, if you remember going to the DMZ museum in Koseong, you can see all the leaflets that the south korean government did actually right in the past so they did they've done it before and i mean jack are you're probably more of an expert on this like how did was there

much north korean response to when south korea was sending all these like photos of bikini clad women and like photos of the 63 building well i don't know if there was a direct leaflet for leaflet response, but it was just taken for granted that during the 60s, 70s, 80s, and even into the 1990s, that both sides were constantly leafleting each other whenever the weather conditions were appropriate. And so both sides were targeting soldiers on the other side, saying if you come over here and bring some weapons or some

information, you'll have compensation and live a good life. And also targeting civilians in the other Korea saying that, you know, your government's corrupt and you should rise up against it. Or in the case of North Korea, you should throw out the American imperialists. So this is just something that both sides were doing. And I don't think either side was trying to stop the other side. It was just natural. Since the Korean War, this is what you do. You target the other side for propaganda.

It was mostly during the, well, it was pretty much all during the military government in South Korea, right? So you're not aware of any local opposition to this. Why are you sending leaflets across? You're endangering the citizens.

I bring that up because I read a really interesting story in Janhap News a couple days ago, or maybe yesterday, about the East-West German, similar stuff going on. I forget when they were talking about, but maybe the 60s, when people were claiming that it was independent groups sending from West to East Germany. But then once the West Germans found out that the government was actually leading some of these, that they were trying to disguise as civil groups, the West Germans said, we don't want you to do that

because you're endangering a conflict with East Germany. And then the two sides actually came together because they both saw the leafleting as enough of an issue, a threat to have talks and to make concessions on different things, like allowing exchanges in exchange for West Germany turning off some broadcasts and stuff like that. But we don't see a parallel in the 70s, 80s, 90s in Korea.

It's an interesting question because the democratization started with the President Noh Tae-woo's period and then Kim Jong-un and Kim Dae-jung. And I'm not aware, and I haven't gone back, but I wasn't aware when I lived here from the period 96 to 99 of there being any organized citizen resistance to the South Korean government sending leaflets to North Korea. And from the South Korean side, that only stopped shortly before the Kim Dae-jung, Kim Jong-il summit of 2000

when the South Korean government said, we're going to stop doing this. And then later on, they also stopped with the loudspeaker broadcast as well. So the government leaflets was stopped in the 90s, not since then? The South Koreans, as far as I'm aware, haven't sent any leaflets since 2000. Okay. But it's interesting also how sensitive the North Koreans have got about this issue, like Kim Jong-un compared to Kim Jong-il, who didn't really seem to care about it that much. But they certainly weren't threatening to lob artillery shells on wherever those leaflets were sent from in South Korea.

Right, which makes you wonder, what is the reason it's become such a sensitivity in North Korea recently? Is it because of... But then we have to couple that together also with that sensitivity about influx of South Korean dramas or music, foreign culture? Isn't that all part of a piece? It's that pollution by outside messaging? Yeah.

Oh, no, I get that. But, I mean, it was prolific in the latter years of Kim Jong-il as well. And there just seemed to be very little effort to penalize it. Whereas now it's like a third rail kind of topic for kim jong-un this whole closing off that kim jong-un is doing compared to kim jong-il more border security more restrictions than than ever before on the population i think it's just all about he's trying to eliminate every single unknown variable to get his country working like this perfect bureaucratic machine that he thinks can he can he can make happen.

So a leaflet is just one thing that they have to make stop. I just don't really, it's hard to see how even sustained leafleting, given how many control guardrails there are in North Korea to prevent uprising and distribution of illicit. are in North Korea to prevent uprising and distribution of illicit. It's just hard to see how even just like routine, regular leafleting could actually snowball into something that could genuinely cause a problem for Kim Jong-un. So I just wonder like, why, what is it that's made, has there been some kind of incident that we don't know about that has caused this really serious clamp down on info from south korea but at the same time they're they've changed their tact at least seemingly changed their their threat which

now is trash balloons and not an overt threat of artillery i think that they would be a little bit more clear and forceful if the threat currently was artillery, which makes you think maybe it isn't as serious. It's something that maybe they want to press as part of some strategy of pushing you in a certain direction. I'm not sure. But maybe it doesn't seem like they're so threatened right now that they want to start warning about nuke launches against artillery. I mean, against leafletters, something like that. So maybe it's part of some other strategy, not necessarily making sure the leaflets stop no matter what. Well, speaking as a sole resident, I'm certainly happy they're not threatening artillery strikes or nuclear weapons just yet. I'll take the bargain of more trash, but I don't

know if the South Korean population will take that bargain. That's unfortunately where we have to stop today. We've run out of time. Thank you very much, Chad and Colin, for coming on the show. Thanks, Jack. That was a quick cutoff. All right. Thanks so much. Thank you. Keeping up with South Korea's fast-paced developments just got easier. Welcome to the Korea Pro podcast, your weekly briefing on the stories that matter. Hosts Jongmin Kim and John Lee dissect topics from diplomacy to technology, ensuring you're always informed. Our episodes are a must

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