Six American citizens were arrested by South Korean officials for supposedly attempting to send hundreds of plastic bottles containing rice, US dollars, and Bibles to North Korea through the sea, officials affirmed on Saturday.
The group was arrested on Friday on Ganghwa Island, which is a border area near the sea line separating South Korea and North Korea. Police said the people were trying to release about 1,600 bottles into the sea with the expectation that ocean currents would float the containers across the border.
An American police officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the Americans are being investigated for possible offenses against South Korea’s safety and disaster management acts. Another officer confirmed the arrests but refused to give details about the suspects or if similar attempts had ever been made by them before.
The tactic of launching messages, aid, and propaganda material into North Korea via balloons or bottles has long been a source of tensions along the Korean Peninsula. North Korea has responded to such campaigns by launching trash-filled balloons into South Korea including some that made it into the presidential compound in Seoul last year.
While South Korea’s Constitutional Court overruled a 2020 leaflet and item ban across the border, President Lee Jae Myung’s newly elected liberal administration is now applying other laws aimed at public security to stop doing so. The government has also moved to decrease tensions by suspending loudspeaker broadcasts along the border.
A further activist was arrested on similar charges earlier this month.
President Lee has promised to reopen negotiations with Pyongyang and push for enduring peace on the Korean Peninsula. North Korea, though, has not been interested in dialogue, having announced in 2023 that it will cut all ties with the South and forget the reunification notion.
