Trash balloons sent by North Korea have landed in South Korea's presidential compound in Seoul, raising security concerns in the south over Pyongyang's provocations.
South Korea's presidential security service deployed its "chemical, biological and radiological [warfare] response team" to collect the trash balloons, said AFP.
Wednesday was the first time the HQ of South Korean head of state Yoon Suk Yeol had been hit by the recent sustained aerial refuse bombardment.
Over the last two months, North Korea has sent thousands of trash-filled balloons toward South Korea in protest against anti-Pyongyang leaflets and materials sent across the border by North Korean defectors and activists in the South.
The contents of the balloons are not consistent. Some are filled with waste paper, others have been filled with worn-out clothing and soil containing traces of human feces, South Korea has said.
South Korea has maintained "full scale" propaganda broadcasts from loudspeakers along the frontier, directed at the North, in response.
The trash landing on Yoon's offices also crossed a red line by breaching the no-fly zone protecting the South Korean president.
The objects were not shot down to restrict the spread of their contents, said South Korea's Yonhap news agency. People are routinely warned not to touch fallen balloons and to report them to authorities.
While in midair "we do not know what the balloons may contain," a presidential official said. "There will be no change in our policy of collecting them after they have fallen."
Meanwhile, South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff said that Pyongyang's actions "clearly violate international law and seriously threaten the safety of our citizens," CNN reported.
South Korea's presidential security service said that none of the trash that fell on the ground near Yoon's offices had any dangerous material and no one was hurt.
Newsweek has contacted the South Korean president's office and the North Korean embassy in London for comment.
Jung Chang Wook, head of the Korea Defense Study Forum think tank told The Associated Press that the North does not have the technology to land balloons at precise locations and that it looked like Pyongyang wanted the objects to land in Seoul.
Earlier this month, Kim Yo Jong, sister of the Pyongyang's leader, Kim Jong Un criticized the dispatch of dozens of balloons, "dirty leaflets" and other material sent by South Korean activists which she described as "crude and dirty play."
The incident comes amid increasing tensions between the neighbors which have been divided since 1953, when an armistice ended the Korean War three years after the North invaded the South.
Last month, South Korea suspended a military deal with the North struck in 2018 in response to the trash-carrying balloons sent by Pyongyang. Since then, Seoul has restarted live-fire drills on border islands and near the Demilitarized Zone dividing the Korean peninsula.
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