SEOUL.- South Korea announced on Monday that it will suspend a rapprochement agreement with North Korea to punish her for launching garbage balloons, even though Pyongyang had said it would stop the campaign.
In recent days, North Korea launched hundreds of balloons to drop garbage and dung on South Korea, a show of anger at previous campaigns by South Korean civilians to drop leaflets on North Korean territory. South Korea said Sunday it would retaliate “unbearably” before the neighboring country suddenly announced it would stop sending balloons across the border.
South Korea’s presidential national security council announced Monday that it had decided to suspend a 2018 inter-Korean agreement aimed at reducing hostilities on the front lines until mutual trust between the two countries was restored, according to the presidential office.
The suspension will allow South Korea to resume military maneuvers near the border with North Korea and take effective and immediate measures against North Korean provocations. The proposal will be presented to the government on Tuesday for approval.
Observers said South Korea needs to suspend the pact to start broadcasting anti-North Korean government propaganda, K-pop songs and international news from its loudspeakers on the border. Such broadcasts have caused unrest in the past in North Korea, a country under strict control where most of its 26 million people officially have no access to foreign news.
A historic peace agreement
The 2018 agreement, reached during a brief period of reconciliation between the progressive Moon Jae-in, then president of South Korea, and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, requires the two countries to stop all hostile acts between them, including propaganda broadcasts and leaflet campaigns.
But the agreement does not clearly state whether civilian activities should also be prohibited. That has allowed South Korean activists to continue sending balloons to drop anti-Pyongyang leaflets, USB sticks with South Korean television series and international news, and US dollars. Outraged by such campaigns, North Korea has shot at balloons in the past and destroyed an empty liaison office built by South Korea on North Korean territory.
The 2018 agreement was already in danger before. Tension soared after the launch of a North Korean spy satellite last November, leading the two countries to take measures that violated the agreement.
Source: With information from AP
