Seoul, South Korea – Seoul will completely suspend a 2018 tension-easing military deal involving nuclear weapons North Koreathe South’s National Security Council said afterward on Monday Pyongyang sent hundreds of waste-filled balloons across the border.
Seoul then partially suspended the agreement last year the North has put a spy satellite into orbitt, but the NSC said it would tell the Cabinet to “suspend the full operation of the ‘September 19 Military Agreement’ until mutual trust between the two Koreas is restored.”
Over the past week, Pyongyang has sent nearly a thousand balloons filled with trash, including cigarette butts and likely manure, to the South in retaliation for anti-regime propaganda missions organized by activists in the South.
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South Korea has called its neighbor’s latest provocation “irrational” and “low class,” but unlike the spate of recent ballistic missile launches, the defection campaign does not violate U.N. sanctions against Kim Jong Un’s isolated government.
The North called off the balloon bombardment on Sunday, saying it had been an effective countermeasure but warning that more could come if necessary.
The 2018 military deal, signed during a period of warmer ties between the two countries still technically at war, aimed to reduce tensions on the peninsula and prevent an accidental escalation, especially along the heavily fortified border.
But after Seoul partially suspended the agreement last November to protest Pyongyang’s successful launch of spy satellites, the North said it would no longer honor the deal altogether.
As a result, Seoul’s NSC said that the agreement was “virtually null and void due to North Korea’s de facto declaration of abandonment” anyway, but that adhering to the rest of it disadvantaged the South in their ability to respond to threats such as balloons.
Respecting the agreement “causes significant challenges to our military’s readiness, especially in the context of a series of recent provocations by North Korea that pose real harm and threats to our citizens,” the report said.
The move will enable “military training in the areas around the military demarcation line” and “more adequate and immediate responses to North Korean provocations.”
The decision must be approved by a cabinet meeting on Tuesday before it takes effect.
Ties between the two Koreas are at their lowest points in years as diplomacy has long stalled and Kim Jong Un steps up weapons testing and development, while the South and Washington, its key security ally, approaches.
Seoul’s decision to jettison the 2018 tension-easing agreement shows that “the country will not tolerate garbage balloons crossing the border, given international standards and the terms of the truce,” said Hong Min, senior analyst at the Korea Institute for National Unification. Seoul.
“However, it could further provoke Pyongyang if it is impossible to physically block the balloons floating southward in the sky,” he said.
South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said the balloons did not appear to contain any hazardous materials but had landed in northern provinces, including the capital Seoul and the neighboring Gyeonggi area, home to nearly half of South Korea’s population.
South Korean officials have also said Seoul would not rule out responding to the balloons by resuming loudspeaker propaganda campaigns along the border with North Korea.
In the past, South Korea has broadcast anti-Kim propaganda to the North, angering Pyongyang, with experts warning a resumption could even spark clashes along the border.
