For decades, South Korean activists have been sending balloons into North Korea containing everything from USB sticks filled with banned media to cash to, believe it or not, anti-North Korea propaganda.


Obviously, this has caused issues over the years. As reported by the Lowy Institute, “In 2012, North Korea threatened to open fire against South Korea if Seoul did not block activists from sending the balloons. …In 2014, North Korea used its antiaircraft machine guns to shoot down balloons and even fired at South Korean positions close to the border.”


To be clear, South Korea isn’t a fan of this, either — they made sending anti-Pyongyang leaflets across the border a criminal offense back in 2020, but that hasn’t stopped activists from continuing the practice.


Now, it seems that North Korea is responding with a new method: sending their own balloons. Filled with shit.



According to the BBC, photographs recently went viral on South Korean social media that showed popped balloons on top of piles of garbage and what appeared to be human feces. To date, around 260 of these balloons have been discovered.


Plus, to hear North Korea tell it, this shit project has only just begun. “‘Mounds of wastepaper and filth will soon be scattered over the border areas and the interior of the ROK and it will directly experience how much effort is required to remove them,’ North Korea's vice-minister of defence Kim Kang Il said in a statement to state media on Sunday,” per the BBC.




South Korean residents have been told to avoid the balloons if they see them, though I doubt that you really need to tell someone to stay away from a poop balloon. Forgive the pun, but it truly is a shitty situation.