‘Poop’ Balloon Dispute Leads South Korea To Suspend Military Pact With North Korea

Amid a dispute over balloons launched by North Korea carrying trash into South Korea, the presidential office in Seoul announced on Monday that South Korea plans to suspend a military agreement signed with North Korea in 2018 aimed at easing tensions between the two countries.

The National Security Council stated that it would raise the pain to suspend the entirety of the military agreement for approval by the cabinet at a meeting on Tuesday. The decision comes after Seoul warned of a strong response to the North Korean balloons, which it has called a provocation.

North Korea has launched hundreds of balloons carried by wind across the border, dropping trash throughout South Korea. Pyongyang claims the action was intended to inconvenience its neighbor, but Seoul has firmly rejected this explanation. Some balloons carried animal droppings in them.

The 2018 military pact, the most substantive deal from the historic summit meetings between the two Koreas that year, had already been largely abandoned when Pyongyang declared last year that it was no longer bound by the agreement.

Since then, North Korea has deployed troops and weapons at guard posts near the military border. The National Security Council stated that by continuing to comply with the pact, “there have been considerable problems in our military’s readiness posture.”

Suspension of the agreement will allow the South to conduct military training near the border and take “sufficient and immediate measures” in response to North Korea’s provocation, though the specific measures were not elaborated on.

South Korea had previously threatened to take “unendurable” measures against North Korea for sending the trash balloons, which in the past has included blaring propaganda from loudspeakers positioned at the border directed at the North.

North Korea has said the balloons were in retaliation for a propaganda campaign by North Korean defectors and activists in the South, who regularly send inflatables containing anti-Pyongyang materials across the border. Pyongyang has reacted angrily to this campaign, fearing the potential impact on the psychology of the North Korean public and the state’s control.

On Sunday, North Korea said it would stop sending the balloons to South Korea but vowed to resume the practice if anti-North Korean leaflets are flown over again from the South.