30
votes
North Korea has launched hundreds of balloons carrying rubbish and excrement at South Korea
Link information
This data is scraped automatically and may be incorrect.
- Title
- North Korea sends 600 more rubbish-filled balloons across border, South says
- Published
- Jun 2 2024
- Word count
- 520 words
Obviously the regime in North Korea is overwhelmingly awful for the vast majority of people suffering under it, but just occasionally there are nuggets of hilarity floating in the authoritarian nightmare.
I'd much rather that states engaged in “unimaginably petty and low-grade behaviour” than flinging bombs or missiles or soldiers at each other.
I was going to say, compared to the vast majority of news out of NK this is a quite a gigglefest.
Ah, the good old "medieval warhead": yeet dead animals and feces over the castle wall with a trebuchet.
A touch less effective in these days of disinfectants and knowledge that germs are a thing. But well done NK for trying!
We can only hope for a world where all national disputes are resolved with prank wars.
Somewhat OT, but one of my Three Wishes in the "What would you do if you found a magic lamp?" game is not 'world peace' but that all violence is replaced, permanently, by dance-offs.
EDIT 2024-Jun-4 T:1957 EST: I failed in (what I consider to be) my basic social obligation to do basic research before commenting on an issue. Specifically that this was a response to prior actions from South Korean activists who were dropping pamphlets and other informational materials with balloons. It DOES affect context in an important way, and I apologize for not reading more before typing. END EDIT.
We're seeing the spreading use of 'operations below the threshold of war' as a method of harassing, attacking, and degrading (in terms of economic and security effects) opponent nations.
One one hand, this example does come across as funny and idiotic. I would argue it is not - this is an extension of asymmetric warfare. It is an attack against SK's economy, their state of readiness, and their morale.
First, think of the cost expended by NK to conduct this attack: economically minimal, resource minimal, and (at least currently with how the world is dealing with these 'below the threshold of war' actions) consequence minimal.
Now think of the costs imposes on SK to respond to this attack: they can't afford to ignore it and not carefully investigate and clean up each drop site. What if, in a future in which they stop responding to these and ignore them, NK eventually decides to drop, say, firebombs, or chemical weapons, or a biological threat? So SK is forced to endure a situation where they have to maintain readiness in the face of constant 'crying wolf' scenarios. The man-hours of the responders have an economic cost, the need to repeatedly respond with serious care has a deteriorating effect on readiness, and the impact on morale flows from understanding both of the prior costs.
This is similarly in-theme with the cyberattacks conducted by Russia, China, and others. Same with China's harassment and less-lethal tactics using their civilian shipping and coast-guard vessels (low-speed ramming and water cannons). Influence operations (election influence / interference as an obvious example). Disinformation campaigns on a scale, and scale of effect, never seen before the age of the internet - and now with the assistance of AI in the most recent years, so much easier to conduct on an even more unthinkably large scale. Multiple orders of magnitude larger for little change in investment scale of personnel and funding.
I think that at western-aligned nations need to discuss and come to a consensus on ways of countering these actions with consequences or responses that impose enough 'cost' of one form or another to take away the tremendous asymmetric advantage with these actions currently in favor of the attackers.
Not to argue about the tit-for-tat exchanges here, but NK is sending trash specifically because SK activists were already sending pamphlets and whatnot north across the border.
Nuance is important, thank you for bringing this up. I'm going to have to say this is straight-up my fault for not looking further into this before posting.
I do stand by my overall view on 'operations below the threshold of war' - but this information does affect the view and context of the trash balloons specifically.
In the article they point out that NK are doing this as retaliation for SK doing the same thing but with payloads of cash, USB sticks and anti-NK propaganda. All done with good enough intent, I'm sure. NK is a dreadful place and I'm certain most South Koreans would love to help their fellow Koreans to a better life.
So a good way to deal with this particular instance of "sub war" activity would be for SK to stop balloon dropping stuff on the North. NK didn't start this one. Maybe, as in any bickering between siblings, they should be the ones to stop it, but every little brother or sister knows that was never fair..
I don't entirely disagree with what you're saying in general, but again in this instance I'm fairly sure the readiness level imposed by NK's vast array of actual weaponry positioned within striking distance of tens of millions of South Koreans reduces the threat implied by these balloons to a rounding error.
I'm not convinced that the Great Western Empire isn't doing plenty of cyberwar and other low-level aggro bullshit in the places we love to blame for doing the same to us. It's not like "western-aligned" nations don't have a track record on this kind of thing. Especially the most western nation of them all, who love nothing more than to meddle in other nation's stuff.
Nuance is important, thank you for bringing this up. I'm going to have to say this is straight-up my fault for not looking further into this before posting.
I do stand by my overall view on 'operations below the threshold of war' - but this information does affect the view and context of the trash balloons specifically.
As for this part:
Completely fair. I should be keeping the wider context in mind and not sticking to 'Side B did this!' while conveniently ignoring Side A having done thematically similar actions.
At the same time, I also don't want to be in a position of inaction because of the 'whataboutism' argument - even when it is being used in a valid manner (and thinking about your points, I do explicitly acknowledge they are valid), and not in a logical-fallacy manner.
So, on review, I still stand by the points I made, but I must additionally acknowledge 'The West' - often specifically the USA, have engaged in generally similar 'operations below the threshold of war' actions - sometimes, perhaps often, (though not always) for widely recognized objectionable / non-ethical reasons.
The USA does tend to apply different methods and tactics than we are seeing from Russia/China/NK etc..., but that is easily understood from a strategic perspective of starting from a place of different position of military and political power (not so much amount when it comes to political power perhaps (compared to China at least, they have definitely made the effort to grow their soft power with Belt & Road and other methods), but more towards... type? flavor? - different countries have different levers to pull for influencing foreign affairs). I guess what I'm saying there is that the 'levers of influence' the USA tends to use are at least partially different than the levers other countries use, perhaps not so much out of moral imperative, but out of availability of which tools are in the toolbox.
If South Korea wanted to humiliate them for revenge they could send their own balloons filled with candy, food, and notes wishing them well on eventually feeding themselves adequately.
SK doing that is what spurred the balloons of trash in the first place, which is explained in the article.
Happy June fools' day!