North Korea sends balloons full of garbage to South Korea

North Korea flew hundreds of balloons carrying trash and manure toward South Korea in one of its most bizarre provocations against its rival in years, prompting the South’s military to mobilize chemical and explosive response teams to recover objects and debris in different parts of the country.

State media said Wednesday that the balloon campaign came as North Korean leader Kim Jong Un urged his military scientists to overcome a failed satellite launch and continue developing space-based reconnaissance capabilities, which he described as crucial for countering U.S. and South Korean military activities.

In his first public comments about the launch failure, Kim also warned of unspecified “overwhelming actions” against South Korea over an exercise involving 20 fighter jets near the inter-Korean border hours before North Korea’s failed launch on Monday.

In a speech Tuesday, Kim described the South Korean response as a “hysterical attack formation flight and strike drill” and “direct military challenge” toward North Korea, the North’s official Korean Central News Agency said Wednesday.

South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said North Korea also has been flying large numbers of trash-carrying balloons toward the South since Tuesday night in retaliation against South Korean activists for flying anti-North Korean propaganda leaflets across the border.

The South’s military said about 260 North Korean balloons were found in various parts of the country as of Wednesday afternoon and were being recovered by military rapid response and explosive clearance teams. The military said the balloons brought various types of trash and manure, but so far, they had found no human excrement. It advised civilians not to touch the objects from North Korea and to report to the military or police after discovering them.

In a statement issued over the weekend, North Korean Vice Defense Minister Kim Kang Il said the North was planning to scatter “mounds of wastepaper and filth” over border areas and other parts of South Korea, in what he described as “tit-for-tat” action against the leafletting by South Korean activists.

Later Wednesday, Kim Yo Jong, the North Korean leader’s powerful sister, took to state media to ridicule a South Korean military statement demanding that the North stop its “inhumane and vulgar activity.”

She said the North was merely exercising its freedom of expression, which the Seoul government has stated as a reason for its inability to stop anti-North Korean activists from flying leaflets across the border.

“Once you experience how nasty and exhausting it feels to pick up dirty filth, you will realize that you shouldn’t talk about freedom of expression so easily when it comes to (leafletting) in border areas,” she said, adding: “We will make it clear that we will respond with tens more times the amount of filth to what the (South Koreans) spray to us in the future.”

Photos released by the South Korean military showed trash scattered across highways and roads in different parts of the country. In the capital, Seoul, military officials found what appeared to be a timer that was likely designed to pop the bags of trash in midair.

In the central South Chungcheong province, two huge balloons carrying an unpopped plastic bag filled with dirt-like substances were seen on a road.