Are North Korea's trash balloons an escalation?

The government of South Korea has warned that it is planning countermeasures against North Korea, which has dramatically ramped up provocations following a failed attempt to place a spy satellite into orbit on May 27.

South Korea's ruling People Power Party (PPP) convened a meeting of its emergency committee on Monday to consider responses to the North's actions after the rocket carrying the satellite exploded in midair shortly after launch.

Since late May, North Korea has jammed GPS signals over a wide area off the west coast of the Korean Peninsula, potentially endangering civilian air and maritime traffic. The North also fired 10 short-range ballistic missiles and rounds from 18 multiple rocket launchers into the Sea of Japan.

Pyongyang has also issued threats against shipping operating near the disputed sea border off the west coast, and claims to have released 2,000 balloons carrying trash and human waste over the border into the South.

Authorities in the South have confirmed around 700 have landed, causing minor damage and spreading human feces and rubbish at landing sites.  

On Monday, senior PPP official Choo Kyung-ho said the regime of Kim Jong Un in North Korea would "inevitably pay the price" for the provocations and demanded an immediate apology from Pyongyang.

The government on Monday  decided to fully suspend the 2018 inter-Korean peace pact "until mutual trust between the two Koreas is restored."

South to resume propaganda broadcasts?

Seoul is also understood to be considering resuming propaganda broadcasts into the North from large loudspeakers placed close to the Demilitarized Zone that separates the feuding neighbors.

Resuming the broadcasts, which were turned off 2018, would represent an escalation, as they are considered to be a form of psychological warfare. The North has in the past threatened to target the speaker sites with artillery barrages.

"South Korea has responded to these childish and vulgar provocations by threatening to resume propaganda broadcasts," said Chun In-bum, a retired lieutenant general in the Republic of Korea Army and now a senior fellow with the National Institute for Deterrence Studies.

Chun said the North responded quickly, saying they would stop sending balloons if the South held off on the propaganda broadcasts. 

"It would appear that some of the tension has been relieved, but I would say that more is yet to come," Chun told DW.

The retired general said the current inner-Korean tensions could be a sign that Kim is again making a big military push, and heading towards weapons capable of striking the continental United States.

There is the widespread belief that Kim is being assisted in the development of such weapons through an increasingly firm alliance with Vladimir Putin's Russia.

North Korea emboldened by Russian support

As Russia's war in Ukraine drags on, the US has warned Russia is providing North Korea with assistance on developing more advanced weapons technology, such as hypersonic missiles, in exchange for North Korean artillery shells.

And with Russia's backing as a permanent member of the UN Security Council, Pyongyang has appeared more emboldened in the face of international criticism.

After UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres condemned the North's failed attempt to launch a rocket carrying a spy satellite on Tuesday, the North bit back, calling Guterres a "servant" of the US.

And while there were suggestions that the UN Security Council might attempt to pass a new resolution on the North, the effort never got off the ground as proponents were aware that Russia would merely use its veto to stifle any debate.

"The UN Security Council is effectively paralyzed on these kinds of issues right now and North Korea sees that as an opportunity to act with impunity," said Dan Pinkston, a professor of international relations at the Seoul campus of Troy University.

"Russia has given Pyongyang the green light to do whatever it wants because all political and diplomatic pressure has been eroded away," he told DW.

Escalated danger of conflict?

As well as having the explicit backing of Moscow, Kim also appears to be deviating from the policies of his father and grandfather vis-a-vis South Korea.

While his predecessors attempted to out-perform the South after failing to win the Korean War and subsume the rest of the peninsula under North Korean rule, that policy changed earlier this year, said Pinkston.

"Kim could be acting more aggressively out of dissatisfaction with the current situation or the long-standing status quo," he said. "He may want to overturn that and is looking for ways to make that happen."

Kim may have concluded that his predecessors' policies have failed to deliver control of the entire peninsula and is looking for an alternative strategy, Pinkston said.

"And those options will include using military force to reach his objectives, which matches the policies of China, Russia and Iran of using force to overturn what they see as a US-led, liberal world order," he added.

"They have no interest in protecting human rights, open economies or ensuring the peaceful settlement of disputes; they see force as a legitimate tool of their foreign policy," he said.

And while North Korean provocations are nothing new on the peninsula, Pinkston cautions that the South and its allies and partners need to be alert.

"These balloons filled with trash appear to be an emotionally immature reaction from the North, but they do have their uses," he pointed out.

"The North is testing the South's air defenses, seeing how fast the military here is able to respond to a threat, seeking out holes in the radar coverage and looking to take advantage of that."

Edited by: Wesley Rahn