By Hyunsu Yim and Ju-min Park
SEOUL (Reuters) -North Korea accused South Korea on Friday of sending drones to scatter a “huge number” of anti-North leaflets over its capital Pyongyang, in what it referred to as a political and army provocation that might result in armed battle.
South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Workers stated it couldn’t verify the North’s accusations but in addition referred in its assertion to Pyongyang’s apply of sending into South Korean airspace balloons with luggage of trash hooked up.
North Korea’s international ministry stated the drones had been flown over Pyongyang at night time this week and final and that the intrusion demanded retaliatory motion, the state information company KCNA reported.
“The ROK (South Korea) should immediately stop such irresponsible and dangerous provocation that may cause an armed conflict and lead to a war between the two sides,” the ministry was quoted as saying.
In its assertion, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Workers stated it “cannot confirm the truth of North Korea’s claims”, including: “All responsibility for the recent series of events” lies with Pyongyang.
It cited “despicable, low-grade and internationally embarrassing acts of filth and garbage balloons and other provocations.” Extra balloons had been being despatched on Friday, it stated.
North Korea has been floating hundreds of balloons with trash hooked up into the South since Could, exacerbating tensions between the 2 international locations.
Pyongyang says they’re a response to some activists and North Korean defectors in South Korea who fly balloons into the North carrying help parcels and leaflets criticising chief Kim Jong Un.
BLURRY IMAGES
KCNA distributed photographs, together with ones exhibiting a blurry, triangular object labelled as a “drone” dropping one other object labelled as “bundle of leaflets”. One picture additionally confirmed a cloud of small objects that was labelled as “scattered leaflets.”
One other picture confirmed black, yellow and white leaflets evaluating the financial state of affairs within the South to the impoverished North and criticizing North Korean chief Kim Jong Un by identify.
South Korea’s Yonhap information company cited an official on the Joint Chiefs of Workers as saying it must look into whether or not a non-public group had despatched leaflets into the North.
In December 5 North Korean drones crossed into South Korea, prompting Seoul to scramble fighter jets and assault helicopters, and attempt to shoot them down, within the first such intrusion since 2017.
The 2 Koreas are nonetheless technically at conflict after their 1950-53 conflict resulted in an armistice, not a peace treaty, and the North has lengthy denounced defectors as “human scum”.
There can be no extra warnings and the North will instantly take motion within the occasion of one other drone being despatched by the South into its territory, North Korea’s international ministry stated.
