South Korea says it will restart anti-North Korean propaganda loudspeaker broadcasts in border areas in response to continuing North Korean campaigns to drop trash on the South with balloons.

Following an emergency security meeting led by South Korean national security director Chang Ho-jin, the officials decided to install and begin the loudspeaker broadcasts in border areas on Sunday, Seoul’s presidential office said in a statement. The move is certain to anger North Korea and potentially prompt it to take its own retaliatory military steps.

North Korea over the weekend flew hundreds of trash-carrying balloons to South Korea in its third such campaign since late May, the South’s military said, just days after South Korean activists floated their own balloons to scatter propaganda leaflets in the North.

North Korea has so far sent more than 1,000 balloons to drop tons of trash and manure in the South in retaliation against South Korean civilian leafletting campaigns, adding to tensions between the war-divided rivals amid a diplomatic stalemate over the North’s nuclear ambitions.

  • Flying Squid
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    -317 days ago

    I would, yes. Provocative? Certainly. Violent? No one was harmed and nothing was damaged.

    • xep
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      17 days ago

      What if I shot a pistol over your head, would that also be considered non-violent? Because it feels very much the same to me every time the DPRK launches these weapons and the J-Alert system goes off.

      • Flying Squid
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        -917 days ago

        Yes, that would also be considered non-violent.

        Neither case fulfills that definition.

        • @Serinus
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          1017 days ago

          Violence intended to near miss is still violence. An attack that won’t hurt you if all goes well is still an attack.

          • Flying Squid
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            -817 days ago

            Not according to the definition I just gave you. Argue with Oxford, not with me.

            The definition very clearly says that you have to intend to hit.

              • Flying Squid
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                -717 days ago

                I’m not sure why you think that says anything different… shooting over someone’s head is not using force so as to injure, abuse, damage or destroy. Neither is shooting a missile into the ocean.

                • @Serinus
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                  717 days ago

                  It’s an instance of treatment marked by the use of usually harmful or destructive physical force.

                  Dictionary definitions are not comprehensive. They’re a guide. That’s why Merriam-Webster and Oxford differ.

                  But even if you want to split hairs, an intentional near miss still fits M-W’s text, because they had the forethought to include “usually”.

                  • Flying Squid
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                    -717 days ago

                    In what way does shooting a missile into the ocean fit the definition I gave or the ones you gave? It isn’t harmful or destructive unless you think it’s harming and destroying the Pacific Ocean. It isn’t.