South Korean And US Defense Minister Desak Pyonyang Stop The Air Balloon Campaign

Air Balloon (Between)

SEOUL - South Korean Defense Minister Shin Won-sik and United States Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin urged Pyongyang to immediately stop repeated launches of garbage-carrying balloons to the South.

The call was made when the two ministers met in Tokyo for bilateral talks, according to a statement by the South Korean Ministry of Defense on Sunday.

Shin stressed that North Korea's continuing air balloon campaign is a threat to South Korea's sovereignty which also violates the Ceasefire Agreement.

Since late May, North Korea has flown thousands of garbage-carrier balloons in retaliation for anti-Pyongyang leaflets sent by defectors and activists in the South.

South Korea has also continued propaganda broadcasts through loudspeakers near the border. During the meeting, defense leaders reiterated their commitment to hinder North Korea's provocations and denounced the illegal arms trade and military technology transfer between Pyongyang and Moscow as a marked breach of UN Security Council resolutions.

Alluding to the recently signed Nuclear Prevention and Nuclear Operations Guidelines on the Korean Peninsula' recently carried out by the two allies, Shin and Austin said that joint nuclear prevention guidelines would provide strong phonations' to enhance their integrated prevention cooperation.

The two defense chiefs reiterated that their alliance is stronger than ever and pledged to make joint efforts for the sake of peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula and the Indo-Pacific region.

The Shing and Austin meeting was held on the sidelines of a trilateral ministerial-level meeting of South Korean, US and Japanese defense chiefs, in which leaders signed a memorandum of understanding of the Trilateral Security Cooperation Framework, a document meant to institutionalize their trilateral security cooperation.