North Korea has launched more than 250 trash-carrying balloons toward South Korea overnight, the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said Wednesday, marking the sixth launch of such balloons since late last month.

Some 100 balloons, largely carrying pieces of scrap paper, landed mostly in Seoul and the northern part of Gyeonggi Province that surrounds the capital, the JCS said in a notice to reporters.

As of 9 a.m., there had been no balloons floating in the air, while an analysis of retrieved balloons showed they did not contain any harmful substances, the JCS said.

A JCS official told reporters that a single trash bundle is estimated to be carrying more than 7,000 pieces of low-quality paper.

Due to the North’s latest balloon launch, domestic and international flights were suspended or delayed for about three hours at Incheon International Airport, just west of Seoul, from 1:46 a.m. Wednesday.

North Korea is estimated to have launched more than 2,000 trash-carrying balloons since May 28 in a tit-for-tat move
against anti-Pyongyang leaflets sent by North Korean defectors and activists in the South.

In response to the balloon campaign, South Korea blared anti-Pyongyang broadcasts through its border loudspeakers on June 9 for the first time in six years. But the broadcasts have not continued in an apparent bid to prevent the situation from spiraling out of control.

The JCS said it remains ready to conduct loudspeaker broadcasts at any time and warned the implementation of such operations would depend on North Korea’s actions.

Earlier in the day, the North also launched a ballistic missile toward the East Sea, but the launch apparently ended in failure as the missile exploded in mid-air, according to the JCS official.

Source: Yonhap News Agency