Winning the Balloon Wars: How Airborne Information Could Prod Kim to Rein in His Nuclear Ambitions

Bruce W. Bennett

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North Korea has signaled an escalation in its “balloon war” with South Korea over the past month, sending hundreds of inflatables southward with payloads of trash and manure. A worthy South Korean response could involve using balloons to deliver upbeat news and K-pop music deep into the North—not just blasting it over loudspeakers at the border.

With the goal of reining in North Korean leader Kim Jong-un's ongoing pursuit of nuclear weapons, South Korea could launch a balloon-borne offensive to deliver a greater quantity of positive information about conditions in the outside world and especially in South Korea, along with the optimistic strains of K-pop and the sagas of K-dramas. Once the South has shown Kim that it is willing and able to flood the North with such content, threats of a continuing deluge could inspire him to rethink his nuclear plans.

Here's why. In the recent past, Kim has become paranoid about his people being exposed to outside information, particularly details about cultural touchstones and lifestyle advances in South Korea. North Korea is an impoverished and distressed country without freedoms, in contrast to its neighbor South Korea, a modern, globally engaged country with a population that enjoys freedom, opportunity, and wealth. Showing the North Korean people how their counterparts to the south live would at the very least be destabilizing for the regime. Kim's recent behavior suggests that he is concerned that outside information is already contributing to instability in the North that could one day threaten his rule.