Kim Jong Un Responds to K-Pop with Poop Balloons

Kim Jong Un has been accused of sending balloons filled with poop and trash into South Korea in a “tit-for-tat” response to anti-Pyongyang leaflets and other materials including K-pop music videos.

According to a report from the Seoul-based Yonhap News Agency, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff has claimed their adversary floated more than 260 balloons across the border since Tuesday night containing “various pieces of trash, such as plastic bottles, batteries, shoe parts, and even manure.”

Per Reuters, North Korean defectors and South Korean activists “regularly” send balloons containing USB sticks loaded with K-pop music videos and K-dramas, anti-Pyongyang leaflets, food, medicine, and money across the border.

On Sunday, North Korea’s Vice Defense Minister Kim Kang Il slammed the South Korean balloons as “despicable psychological warfare” and a “dangerous provocation” that would be met with “mounds of waste paper and filth” in response.

Kim Jong Un has been notorious for his attempts to eradicate K-pop music and K-dramas, which he considers a “vicious cancer” in North Korea. In December 2021, a study from a Seoul-based human rights group reported he had executed at least seven people in North Korea for watching or distributing K-pop videos over the past decade.