North Korean trash balloon lands on South Korea's presidential compound
A trash filled balloon floated over from North Korea and hit South Korea's presidential compound, security officials said.
SEOUL, South Korea — It’s not the cross-border barrage South Koreans have been fearing, but a balloon carrying a bag of trash floated over from North Korea and hit the presidential compound, security officials said Wednesday.
Seoul’s Presidential Security Service told NBC News in a telephone call that it had tracked the balloon in real-time as it was carried by the winds across its nuclear-armed neighbor's border, until it eventually landed in the the presidential compound in the South Korean capital.
It posed no danger, the agency added.
Balloons emerged as a new and messy weapon of war earlier this year. Since May, North Korea has been floating thousands of balloons with bags of trash attached to them, which have become a new source of tension between the two Koreas. Some have been filled with bottles, old batteries and even manure, but more recently they have just been carrying waste paper.
Pyongyang has said the launches are a tit-for-tat response to activists and defectors who have for years sent propaganda leaflets via balloons. Others have contained dollar drugs and painkillers like Paracetamol.
Rating: 5