South Korean activists sent balloons carrying K-pop and K-dramas on USB sticks to their northern neighbor on Thursday, days after North Korean balloons of trash and \u201cfilth\u201d floated in the opposite direction. <\/p>\n
The activist group Fighters for a Free North Korea (FFNK) released the giant <\/strong>balloons in the early hours of Thursday morning, with videos showing <\/strong>them floating away, some dragging giant posters visible from afar while others carried smaller plastic packages. <\/p>\n Inside <\/strong>the packages were 200,000 leaflets condemning North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, 5,000 USB sticks containing South Korean music videos and television shows, and 2,000 one dollar bills, according to FFNK. <\/p>\n Groups such as FFNK have been sending these kinds of balloons for years, carrying items prohibited in the isolated totalitarian dictatorship \u2013 including food, medicine, radios, propaganda leaflets and pieces of South Korean news. <\/p>\n In May, North Korea responded by sending its own giant balloons back south \u2013 containing trash, soil, pieces of paper and plastic, and what South Korean authorities described as \u201cfilth.\u201d <\/p>\n Pyongyang claimed to have sent a total of 3,500 balloons carrying 15 tonnes of trash to its neighbor, according to state media KCNA, citing North Korea\u2019s Vice Defense Minister Kim Kang Il. <\/p>\n Those balloons began landing in the South last week, temporarily disrupting flights and prompting authorities to warn residents to stay indoors. As of Monday, the South Korean military had found about 1,000 balloons. <\/p>\n South Korean activists say they will continue to send the balloons north \u2013 even though doing so was banned by the government years ago. <\/p>\n FFNK leader Park Sang-hak, a North Korean defector who fled to the South years ago, described the materials they sent as \u201cletters of truth and freedom.\u201d <\/p>\n As a young man in North Korea, these balloons had offered him a rare glimpse into the outside world, he said. He recalled being in a public square in 1992 when \u201cI heard a huge balloon in the sky.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cThis round thing suddenly popped with a loud bang, then leaflets fell from the sky. I knew I wasn\u2019t supposed to look at those things, so I put one in my pocket and went to the bathroom to check it out,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n The leaflet he pocketed contained stories about North Korean defectors and their escapes, some of whom had crossed into China before heading toward South Korea. <\/p>\n Eight years later, Park fled the North \u2013 arriving in South Korea in 2000, and beginning his mission to send balloons across the border in 2006. <\/p>\n The leaflets he sends carry information about the Kim family, including the assassination of the leader\u2019s half-brother Kim Jong Nam \u2014 as well as booklets about South Korea\u2019s economic and political development, including photos of the main Seoul airport and the country\u2019s fighter jets. <\/p>\n Meanwhile, some South Korean residents living near the border are now on edge. <\/p>\n \u201cI lived through the Korean War and other difficulties, and I was worried \u2026 What if we have another war?\u201d said 84-year-old Song Kwang-ja, a resident of Yongin city, on Thursday. <\/p>\n \u201cThat reminded me of the old days. I still get goosebumps thinking and talking about it,\u201d she said, adding that the balloons \u201cfelt like a childish prank.\u201d <\/p>\n The incident has also worsened strained relations between the two countries. South Korea announced this week it would resume \u201call military activities\u201d near the demarcation line \u2013 suspending a 2018 agreement signed by both nations at a brief time of relatively warm relations. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" South Korean activists sent balloons carrying K-pop and K-dramas on USB sticks to their northern neighbor on Thursday, days after North Korean balloons of trash and \u201cfilth\u201d floated in the opposite direction. The activist group Fighters for a Free North Korea (FFNK) released the giant balloons in the early hours of Thursday morning, with videos <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4169,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-4168","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4168","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4168"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4168\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4169"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4168"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}