Seoul to fully suspend inter-Korean military deal over balloons

Seoul will fully suspend a 2018 tension-reducing military deal with nuclear-armed North Korea, the South’s National Security Council said on June 3, after Pyongyang sent hundreds of trash-filled balloons across the border.

Seoul will fully suspend a 2018 tension-reducing military deal with nuclear-armed North Korea, the South's National Security Council said on June 3, after Pyongyang sent hundreds of trash-filled balloons across the border.

Seoul partially suspended the agreement last year after the North put a spy satellite into orbit, but the NSC said it would tell the Cabinet "to suspend the entire effect of the 'September 19 Military Agreement' until mutual trust between the two Koreas is restored".

Also Read: North Korea vows to stop trash balloons to South Korea

In the last week, Pyongyang has sent nearly a thousand balloons carrying garbage including cigarette butts and likely manure into the South, in what it says was retaliation for missives bearing anti-regime propaganda organised by activists in the South.

South Korea has called the latest provocation from its neighbour "irrational" and "low-class" but, unlike the spate of recent ballistic missile launches, the trash campaign does not violate U.N. sanctions on Kim Jong-un's isolated government.

The North called off the balloon bombardment on Sunday, saying it had been an effective countermeasure — but warning that more could come if needed.

The 2018 military deal, signed during a period of warmer ties between the two countries which remain technically at war, aims to reduce tensions on the peninsula and avoid an accidental escalation, especially along the heavily fortified border.