South Korea said it has restarted anti-Pyongyang propaganda broadcasts across the border in response to North Korea’s resumption of rubbish-carrying balloon launches.

South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement that its frontline loudspeaker broadcasts were conducted between Thursday evening and Friday morning in areas where North Korea floated the balloons.

South Korea’s military said North Korea must be blamed for heightened tensions because it ignored South Korea’s repeated warnings and continued its “despicable” balloon campaigns.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement that the South Korean military will conduct loudspeaker broadcasts in a fuller manner and other stronger steps if North Korea continues provocations like balloon launches.

The broadcasts could trigger an angry response from North Korea which is extremely sensitive to any outside attempt to undermine its political system.

In 2015, when South Korea restarted loudspeaker broadcasts for the first time in 11 years, North Korea fired artillery rounds across the border, prompting the South to return fire, according to South Korean officials.

South Korea’s military earlier said North Korea floated the balloons on Thursday afternoon in its seventh such campaign in recent months.

The balloon launches were widely expected as the North had vowed to respond to what it called repeated South Korean civilian leafleting campaigns across the border.

Since late May, North Korea has floated more than 2,000 balloons carrying rubbish, scraps of cloth, cigarette butts and even manure toward South Korea, saying they were in response to activists sending political leaflets to the North via their balloons.

No hazardous materials were found.

In response, South Korea suspended a 2018 tension-reduction deal with North Korea, resuming propaganda broadcasts briefly and frontline live-fire military drills at border areas.

The propaganda broadcasts by South Korea on June 9 reportedly included K-pop sensation BTS’s hits like Butter and Dynamite, weather forecasts and news on Samsung, the biggest South Korean company, as well as outside criticism of the North’s missile program and its crackdown on foreign video.

The Cold War-style campaigns had paused after North Korea last sent rubbish-carrying balloons toward South Korea in late June.

Earlier this week, the powerful sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said South Korean balloons have been found again at the border and other areas.

In her statement on Tuesday, Kim Yo Jong threatened new retaliatory steps, saying South Korean “scum” must be ready to pay “a gruesome and dear price”.

That raised concerns that North Korea could stage physical provocations, rather than balloon launches.

South Korea’s military said on Wednesday it has boosted its readiness to brace for any provocation by North Korea. It said North Korea may fire at incoming South Korean balloons across the border.

It was not immediately known whether groups in South Korea have recently scattered leaflets in North Korea.

For years, activist groups led by North Korean defectors have used helium-filled balloons to drop anti-North Korean leaflets, USB sticks containing K-pop music and South Korean dramas and US dollar bills in the North.

North Korea views such activities as a serious security threat and a challenge to its ban on foreign news for most of its 26 million people.

In 2020, North Korea destroyed an unoccupied South Korean-built liaison office on its territory in a furious response to South Korean civilian leafleting campaigns.

In 2014, North Korea fired at balloons flying toward its territory and South Korea returned fire, although there were no casualties.

Tensions between the Koreas have heightened in recent years because of North Korea’s missile tests and the expansion of US-South Korean military drills that North Korea calls invasion rehearsals.

North Korea’s state media said on Friday that Mr Kim met a visiting Russian delegation led by vice defence minister Aleksey Krivoruchko. During the meeting, Mr Kim stressed the need for the two countries’ armies to unite more firmly to defend international peace and justice, according to the North’s official Korean Central News Agency.

In June, Mr Kim met Russian President Vladimir Putin in Pyongyang and signed a deal requiring each country to provide aid to the other if it is attacked and vowed to boost other co-operation.

Analysts say the accord represents the strongest connection between the two countries since the end of the Cold War.