South Korea is holding an emergency meeting on Sunday in response to worsening ties with North Korea, and following threats of military action by Kim Yo Jong, sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
Kim, who serves as a top aide, says that she is to instruct North Korean forces to carry out a decisive action, saying “I feel it is high time to surely break with the South Korea authorities.”
She didn’t specify what that would entail, but South Koreans have recently been sending anti-regime leaflets north, and that tends to rile up the North Korean government and lead to threats of non-specific actions. South Korea is urging both sides to honor agreements.
Intra-Korean negotiations had made huge progress in recent years, but with no new talks in over a year, the atmosphere is progressively worsening, and North Korea is now threatening to cut ties with the South entirely.
So they should be. This girl has got guts unlike “tub of lard” Pompeo
… The article forgets to mention, that South Korea has been using defectors to send over literal propaganda balloons loaded with anti-NK pamphlets and food.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-northkorea-southkorea-defectors-idUSKBN23H1BF.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-korea-north-idUSBRE89I09Y20121019
The switch from detente to maximum pressure like Iran will not go over well in NK.
Hate people who litter.
So far as I can tell, South Korea’s regime has been trying to STOP defectors (and religionists) from sending the balloons over.
But “so far as I can tell” means that I have limited media sources to get the story from, so I could be wrong.
Well, Reuters is MSM news, but high level MSM news. They have no reason to promote NK pretexts for PR stunts.
NK may need a domestic PR boost – the pandemic situation is a black box, for example, but NK probably has mass casualties every flu season. NK need not resort to blowing up their own buildings for PR. They might also want attention from Trump… but surely they realize, Trump is likely in his last months of ‘power’.
A more dedicated NK watching site, appears to be trying to minimize the incident, suggesting there was only one such balloon incident and implies blowing up the North-South dialogue centre is part of some larger NK strategy.
However, they also admit, NK-SK relations have been very poor the past year. Dissidents sending whatever balloon(s) over, could be more like a last straw reaction.
https://www.38north.org/2020/06/rcarlin060920/
However, far from being ‘just balloons’, balloon harassment has been going on for years and a major propaganda tool for the South. When the Koreans agreed to their sunshine policy, officially sponsored SK ballooning stopped as part of the deal. And went to SK’s ‘private sector’; obviously an unwelcome cheat.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balloon_propaganda_campaigns_in_Korea
Floods of SK message balloons have included not just pamphlets attacking Kim, but candy, U.S. dollar notes, and Bibles. That last item is obviously as inflammatory as the first.
NK has sent across balloons, in fewer numbers loaded with far less goodies. NK pamphlets are said to simply demand an end to hostilities.
South Korea has finally gotten around to proposing legislation, but significant factions probably enjoy the sport of petty trolling the North.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/south-korea-plans-to-stop-balloons-to-north-korea/ar-BB151dzU
When balloon propaganda campaigns never stopped, even amid peace and dialogue hype, NK apparently came to the only conclusion; detente was all a sham.
NK is likely signalling, not as a warning but as a done deal, that their Korea policy is shifting from hopes for peace, to some new version of the old normal where peace was not really expected.
Gaining nuclear capability was supposed to be the great game changer, the North’s peacemaker weapon, but didn’t change a thing. Rather than admit defeat, North Korea is carrying on.
South Korea revoked the NGO status of the two groups sending the propaganda balloons and threatened legal action against them to curtail their efforts. It’s not state-backed at all.
<ahttp://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_northkorea/949419.html
There are probably a lot more than a couple of groups ballooning NK. The non-state status of the groups is probably inflammatory in and of itself.
When North and South Korea agreed to a sunshine policy, ballooning was supposed to stop.
SK shifting it to private individuals and groups, was a dishonest loopholing of the dialogue agreements. Then Korean Christian missionaries took ballooning campaigns up as a crusade. Apparently many NK defectors are Protestant Christians as well.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balloon_propaganda_campaigns_in_Korea
https://www1.cbn.com/cbnnews/2016/august/bible-balloon-offensive-floats-into-north-korea
fairly obvious that her obese brother is toast and she is now in charge. it won’t end well for no korea if they so much as knock a branch off a tree in so korea.
Obviously you’ve never faced an angry woman….