South Korea is monitoring its border areas for possible retaliatory attacks by its neighbor in response to anti-North propaganda distributed by rights activists, Seoul's defense chief said this week.
Shin Won-sik said North Korea may order its troops to "shoot down South Korean balloons used to scatter leaflets or shell locations from which the balloons are launched," according to a transcript of his July 22 interview with Japan's Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper, published on Wednesday.
Shin, a retired South Korean army lieutenant general and the former No. 2 of the nation's Joint Chiefs of Staff said Kim Jong Un's regime is "nervous" any external information that might undermine the legitimacy of his rule at home.
North Korea has responded by launching thousands of trash-carrying balloons across the border, and the South has hit back by resuming propaganda broadcasts that include daily news and K-pop.
But Shin's comments suggest for the first time that the weekslong tit-for-tat at the inter-Korean border could, in fact, escalate into an armed confrontation between North Korea and the South—a U.S. defense treaty ally.
The South Korean defense minister said the likelihood of a more forceful reaction by the North rose earlier this month when Kim Yo Jong, Kim Jong Un's powerful sister, warned Seoul it would pay "a terrible price" if it refused to intervene in the anti-Pyongyang leaflets sent by defectors and human rights groups.
South Korean officials accept hundreds of defectors from the North each year. The government is officially reluctant to stop rights activists from practicing what it calls freedom of expression, but local news reports said officials had engaged some of the civilian groups about dialing back the frequency of their actions at a time of high tensions at the border.
Newsweek reached out to North Korea's embassy in Beijing for comment.
Separately on Wednesday, South Korea's military said North Korean balloons—now totaling more than 3,000 since late May—landed in the heart of Seoul near the office of President Yoon Suk Yeol. Authorities said no hazardous materials were detected.
South Korea has called the moves "a low-class provocation." In response, about 40 loudspeakers installed across the 160-mile Military Demarcation Line, running through the Demilitarized Zone, have blared propaganda for four consecutive days.
South Korea's Joint Chiefs said this month that the nuclear-armed North was fortifying DMZ border crossings with land mines despite a series of fatal explosions.
Shin told the Yomiuri that any nuclear weapons use by North Korea would result in the end of Kim's regime.
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