SEOUL (Reuters) – South Korea plans to suspend a military deal signed with North Korea in 2018 aimed at easing tensions, the presidential office said on Monday, after Seoul warned of a strong response on balloons launched by Pyongyang carrying waste south.
North Korea has launched hundreds of balloons carried by the wind across the border, dropping debris across South Korea. South Korea called it a provocation and rejected Pyongyang’s claim that it was done to inconvenience its neighbor.
The National Security Council said during a meeting on Tuesday that it would submit the plan to suspend the entire military agreement to the cabinet for approval.
Suspending the agreement will pave the way for the South to conduct training near the military border and take “sufficient and immediate measures” in response to North Korea’s provocation, the council said in a statement.
What those measures might be was not further explained.
The pact, which was the most substantive agreement to emerge from months of historic summits between the two Koreas in 2018, was all but scrapped when Pyongyang declared last year that it was no longer bound by it.
Since then, the North has deployed troops and weapons to guard posts near the military border.
Continuing to adhere to the pact, “there have been significant problems with the readiness of our military,” the council said.
South Korea has previously said it will take “intolerable” measures against North Korea for sending the garbage balloons across the border, including blaring propaganda from loudspeakers at the border aimed at the North.
North Korea has said the balloons were in retaliation for a propaganda campaign by North Korean defectors and activists in the South, who regularly send inflatable boats carrying anti-Pyongyang leaflets containing food, medicine, money and USB drives packed with K-pop music videos and dramas. across the border.
North Korea has reacted angrily to the campaign because it is concerned about the potential impact of the materials on the psychology of the people who read or listen to them and on state control over the public, experts say.
(Reporting by Jack Kim; Editing by Kim Coghill and Michael Perry)
