A large-scale campaign of aerial littering, confirmed real by Kim Jong Un's sister, marks a bizarre new turn in inter-Korean relations. Manure. Cigarette butts.
Scraps of cloth. Waste batteries. Even, reportedly, diapers.
This week, North Korea floated hundreds of large balloons to dump all of that trash across rival South Korea — an old-fashioned, Cold War-style provocation of a sort the isolated dictatorship has rarely used in recent years. The powerful sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un confirmed Wednesday that North Korea sent the balloons and attached trash sacks, saying they were deployed to make good on her country's recent threat to "scatter mounds of wastepaper and filth" in South Korea in response to aerial leafleting campaigns launched by South Korean activists. Experts say the trash balloon campaign is meant to stoke division in South Korea over the conservative Seoul government's hardline policy toward the North.
They also say new types of provocations should be expected in the coming months as the North seeks to meddle in the US presidential election. Here's a look at what North Korea's balloon launches are all about. Since Tuesday night, about 260 balloons flown from North Korea have been discovered across South Korea.
There's no apparent danger, though: The military said an initial investigation showed that the trash tied to the balloons doesn't contain any dangerous substances like chemical, biological or radioactive materials. There have been no rep.