A plastic bag carrying various objects including what appeared to be trash that crossed inter-Korean border with a balloon believed to have been sent by North Korea, is pictured in Seoul, in this picture provided and released by the Defense Ministry, June 2, 2024.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

North Korea said on June 2 it would stop sending trash-filled balloons across the border into the South, saying the “disgusting” missives had been an effective countermeasure against propaganda sent by anti-regime activists.

Since Tuesday, the North has sent nearly a thousand balloons carrying bags of rubbish containing everything from cigarette butts to bits of cardboard and plastic, Seoul’s military said, warning the public to stay away.

South Korea has called the latest provocation from its nuclear-armed neighbour “irrational” and “low-class” but, unlike the spate of recent ballistic missile launches, the trash campaign does not violate U.N. sanctions on Kim Jong Un’s isolated regime.

Seoul on June 2 warned it would take strong countermeasures unless the North called off the balloon bombardment, saying it runs counter to the armistice agreement that ended the 1950-53 Korean War hostilities.

Late Sunday, the North announced it would stop its campaign, after scattering what it claimed was “15 tons of waste paper” using thousands of “devices” to deliver them.

“We have given the South Koreans a full experience of how disgusting and labor-intensive it is to collect scattered waste paper,” it said in a statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency.

The North said it will now “temporarily suspend” its campaign, saying it had been a “pure countermeasure”.

“However, if the South Koreans resume the distribution of anti-DPRK leaflets, we will respond by scattering one hundred times the amount of waste paper and filth, as we have already warned, in proportion to the detected quantity and frequency,” it said, using the acronym for the country’s official name.

Activists in the South have also floated their own balloons over the border, filled with leaflets and sometimes cash, rice or USB thumb drives loaded with K-dramas.

Earlier this week, Pyongyang described its “sincere gifts” as a retaliation for the propaganda-laden balloons sent into North Korea.

South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said the balloons had been landing in northern provinces, including the capital Seoul and the adjacent area of Gyeonggi, which are collectively home to nearly half of South Korea’s population.

The latest batch of balloons were full of “waste such as cigarette butts, scrap paper, fabric pieces and plastic,” the JCS said, adding that military officials and police were collecting them.

“Our military is conducting surveillance and reconnaissance from the launch points of the balloons, tracking them through aerial reconnaissance, and collecting the fallen debris, prioritising public safety,” it said.

Balloon wars

South Korea’s National Security Council met Sunday, and a presidential official said Seoul would not rule out responding to the balloons by resuming loudspeaker propaganda campaigns along the border with North Korea.

In the past, South Korea has broadcast anti-Kim propaganda into the North, which infuriates Pyongyang.

“If Seoul chooses to resume anti-North broadcast via loudspeakers along the border, which Pyongyang dislikes as much as anti-Kim balloons, it could lead to limited armed conflict along border areas, such as in the West Sea,” said Cheong Seong-chang, director of the Korean peninsula strategy at Sejong Institute.

In 2018, during a period of improved inter-Korean relations, both leaders agreed to “completely cease all hostile acts against each other in every domain”, including the distribution of leaflets.

South Korea’s parliament passed a law in 2020 criminalising sending leaflets into the North, but the law — which did not deter the activists — was struck down last year as a violation of free speech.

Kim Jong Un’s sister Kim Yo Jong — one of Pyongyang’s key spokespeople — mocked South Korea for complaining about the balloons this week, saying North Koreans were simply exercising their freedom of expression.

The two Koreas’ propaganda offensives have sometimes escalated into larger tit-for-tats.

In June 2020, Pyongyang unilaterally cut off all official military and political communication links with the South and blew up an inter-Korean liaison office on its side of the border.

The trash campaign comes after analysts have warned Kim is testing weapons before sending them to Russia for use in Ukraine, with South Korea’s defence minister saying this weekend that Pyongyang has now shipped about 10,000 containers of arms to Moscow, in return for Russian satellite know-how.

This photo provided by the North Korean government, shows what it says a test fire of tactical ballistic missile at an undisclosed place in North Korea Thursday, May 17, 2024.

North Korea has test-fired a tactical ballistic missile equipped with a “new autonomous navigation system”, state media said on May 18, with leader Kim Jong Un vowing to boost the country’s nuclear force.

Mr. Kim oversaw the Friday test-launch into the East Sea, also known as the Sea of Japan, on a mission to evaluate the “accuracy and reliability of the autonomous navigation system”, Pyongyang’s official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said.

The launch was the latest in a string of ever more sophisticated tests by North Korea, which has fired off cruise missiles, tactical rockets and hypersonic weapons in recent months, in what the nuclear-armed, U.N.-sanctioned country says is a drive to upgrade its defences.

The Friday launch came hours after leader Mr. Kim’s powerful sister Kim Yo Jong denied allegations by Seoul and Washington that Pyongyang is shipping weapons to Russia for use in its war in Ukraine.

Seoul’s military on Friday described the test as “several flying objects presumed to be short-range ballistic missiles” from North Korea’s eastern Wonsan area into waters off its coast.

The suspected missiles travelled around 300 kilometres (186 miles) before splashing down in waters between South Korea and Japan, the Joint Chiefs of Staff in Seoul said.

“The accuracy and reliability of the autonomous navigation system were verified through the test fire,” Pyongyang’s KCNA said Saturday, adding leader Kim expressed “great satisfaction” over the launch.

Also Read | North Korea to launch three new spy satellites, build more nuclear weapons in 2024

In a separate report released on May 18, KCNA said Mr. Kim visited a military production facility the previous day and urged for “more rapidly bolstering the nuclear force” of the nation “without halt and hesitation”.

During the visit, he said the “enemies would be afraid of and dare not to play with fire only when they witness the nuclear combat posture of our state”, according to KCNA.

Pyongyang’s nuclear force “will meet a very important change and occupy a remarkably raised strategic position” when its munitions production plan, aimed to be completed by 2025, is carried out, it added.

Putin’s attention

Seoul and Washington have accused North Korea of sending arms to Russia, which would violate rafts of United Nations sanctions on both countries, with experts saying the recent spate of testing may be of weapons destined for use on battlefields in Ukraine.

North Korea is barred by U.N. sanctions from any tests using ballistic technology, but its key ally Moscow used its U.N. Security Council veto in March to effectively end U.N. monitoring of violations, for which Pyongyang has specifically thanked Russia.

Also Read | The quick transformation of Russia-North Korea ties

But leader Kim’s sister Kim Yo Jong said Friday that Pyongyang had “no intention to export our military technical capabilities to any country”, adding that the North’s priority was “to make the war readiness and war deterrent of our army more perfect in quality and quantity”.

She accused Seoul and Washington of “misleading the public opinion” with their allegations that Pyongyang was transferring arms to Russia.

The Friday launches come as Russian leader Vladimir Putin was in China on Friday, the final day of a visit aiming to promote crucial trade with Beijing – North Korea’s most important ally – and win greater support for his war effort in Ukraine.

North Korea’s latest weapons tests were likely intended to attract the attention of Mr. Putin while he was in China, said Ahn Chan-il, a defector-turned-researcher who runs the World Institute for North Korea Studies.

The North would benefit greatly from an expected visit by Putin to Pyongyang, and “they want their country to be used as a military logistics base during Russia’s ongoing war (in Ukraine)“, he told AFP.

Yang Moo-jin, president of the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul, said: “China and Russia’s irresponsible handling of North Korea, riding on the new Cold War dynamics, is further encouraging Pyongyang’s nuclear armament.”

Inter-Korean relations are at one of their lowest points in years, with Pyongyang declaring Seoul its “principal enemy”.

It has jettisoned agencies dedicated to reunification and threatened war over “even 0.001 mm” of territorial infringement.

Pakistan’s former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif releases a dove as he arrives to address a welcoming rally in Lahore, Pakistan, on Oct. 21, 2023.
| Photo Credit: AP

Former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif signed applications on his return to Pakistan to restore pending appeals against his convictions in the Avenfield Apartments and Al-Azizia corruption cases.

Sharif, 73, the three-time Prime Minister and supremo of Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), returned to Pakistan on October 21 after spending four years in self-imposed exile in London.

Sharif signed the applications at Islamabad Inter­national Airport on October 21

The applications, prepared by his legal team, will be filed in the Islamabad High Court (IHC) Division Bench and are likely to be heard on October 24, a PML-N lawyer told Dawn newspaper.

Sharif’s legal team will also present a petition seeking protective bail. Besides, Sharif is also supposed to appear before an accountability court on the same day, the report said.

The former Prime Minister was convicted in the Avenfield and Al-Azizia cases and was declared a proclaimed offender in the Toshakhana vehicle case, which is pending before an Islamabad accountability court.

He was on bail in these cases when he left for the U.K. in 2019 on medical grounds.

On July 6, 2018, a few days before the general elections, accountability court judge Muhammad Bashir convicted Sharif, his daughter Maryam Nawaz Sharif and her husband, Captain Safdar Awan, in the Avenfield Apartments case that was investigated by a six-member joint investigation team formed to look into the Panama Papers revelations.

While an Islamabad High Court division bench virtually cleared Sharif in the Avenfield apartments case, calling the accountability court’s decision “not correct“, Sharif’s absconder status meant that he was not exonerated despite the court observing a lack of substantial evidence against him, the report said.

The detailed order said the accountability watchdog could not give a satisfactory answer to the question of whether the prosecution had “discharged the onus required on its part”, it said.

The prosecution had to prove that Sharif had purchased Avenfield Apartments in the name of Maryam through corrupt and illegal practices and that she, being his dependent, had aided and abetted him by concealing the true ownership.

It also had to prove that when the properties were acquired, Sharif was a public office-holder.

“There does not exist on record any evidence to the effect,” the court order said.

Peter Strzok, who was a lead agent in the FBI’s investigation into ties between Russia and the 2016 Trump campaign, has alleged in a lawsuit against the Justice Department that he was wrongfully fired for exercising his First Amendment rights when he and a colleague traded anti-Trump text messages in the weeks before he became president. File
| Photo Credit: AP

Donald Trump is scheduled to be questioned under oath Tuesday as part of lawsuits from two former FBI employees who provoked the former president’s outrage after sending each other pejorative text messages about him.

Peter Strzok, who was a lead agent in the FBI’s investigation into ties between Russia and the 2016 Trump campaign, has alleged in a lawsuit against the Justice Department that he was wrongfully fired for exercising his First Amendment rights when he and a colleague traded anti-Trump text messages in the weeks before he became president.

Lisa Page, the FBI lawyer who texted with Strzok and had also been assigned to the Russia investigation, has sued as well, alleging that the Justice Department violated her privacy by disclosing copies of her messages with Strzok to members of the news media. She voluntarily resigned from the FBI in May 2018, and Strzok was fired several months after that.

Both allege that the Justice Department acted under unrelenting pressure from Trump, who repeatedly lambasted the pair on social media, publicly championed Strzok’s firing and accused him of “treason.” Lawyers for the two hope to be able to prove as part of their suits that Trump’s verbal tirades and appeals for action wrongly influenced the Justice Department’s punitive actions.

The Justice Department had sought to block the deposition of Trump as unnecessary, citing testimony from other witnesses who’d already been interviewed in the lawsuits that Trump had no impact on the decision to fire Strzok.

The department in court filings, for instance, has pointed to an interview with former FBI Deputy Director David Bowdich in which he said he made the decision to fire Strzok on his own, and that he did not recall FBI Director Chris Wray ever telling him about any meeting with Trump in which the president pressured him about Strzok.

But both U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson and a federal appeals court rebuffed the Justice Department, permitting a two-hour deposition to move forward.

The deposition had been scheduled to take place at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s Florida estate, but was moved to New York, where Trump was scheduled to be present in court this week for an ongoing civil fraud trial. It is set to unfold as Trump contends with four different criminal cases ranging from allegations of scheming to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election to illegally hoarding classified documents at Mar-a-Lago.

The text messages — in which Strzok and Page disparaged Trump as an “idiot” and “loathsome human” and called the prospect of a Trump victory “terrifying” — were discovered by the Justice Department inspector general’s office — as it scrutinized the FBI’s investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server as secretary of state.

Strzok was a lead agent in that probe as well, and he notes in his lawsuit that the inspector general found no evidence that political bias tainted the email investigation. The text messages, which were disclosed to Justice Department leadership after being discovered by the inspector general, resulted in Strzok being removed from the special counsel team conducting the Trump-Russia investigation. The inspector general identified numerous flaws with that probe but did not find find evidence of partisan bias.

In his 2020 book, “Compromised: Counterintelligence and the Threat of Donald J. Trump,” Strzok expressed measured regret for the text messages and the impact they had on the FBI.

“I deeply regret casually commenting about the things I observed in the headlines and behind the scenes, and I regret how effectively my words were weaponized to harm the Bureau and buttress absurd conspiracy theories about our vital work,” Strzok wrote.

But in an interview that year with The Associated Press, he also described the personal toll of the attacks from Trump.

“Being subjected to outrageous attacks up to and including by the president himself, which are full of lies and mischaracterizations and just crude and cruel, is horrible,” Strzok said. “There’s no way around it.”

The special grand jury that investigated efforts by Donald Trump and others to overturn Georgia’s 2020 election results recommended indictments against twice as many people as the 19 ultimately charged by prosecutors, leaving South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham among those not indicted.

The grand jurors’ report released Friday showed they recommended charges against 39 people, including Graham, former U.S. Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue of Georgia and former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn.

Released at the request of the special grand jury, the report provides insight into one of the most expansive investigations into Mr. Trump, who is also facing two federal indictments along with unrelated state charges in New York City. While critics have accused Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis of launching an unwieldy, overly broad case, the report suggests she used her discretion to streamline the case.

There are many reasons Willis might have chosen not to charge all those recommended, including immunity deals with some, federal protections for others or insufficient evidence to prove charges beyond a reasonable doubt.

The special grand jury included Mr. Graham’s name in a section about “the national effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election,” which Mr. Trump, the incumbent Republican, lost to Democrat Joe Biden. The South Carolina senator, who was chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee at the time, called Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger shortly after the November election, and Mr. Raffensperger has said Mr. Graham asked him whether he had the power to reject certain absentee ballots.

Mr. Perdue and Mr. Loeffler were sitting U.S. senators who had failed to win enough votes in the November 2020 general election and were forced into a January 2021 runoff, which they both ultimately lost to Democratic challengers. In the weeks after the election, they were vocal in their criticism of Mr. Raffensperger, going so far as to call for his resignation.

In an interview on a right-wing cable news channel in mid-December 2020, Mr. Flynn said Mr. Trump “could take military capabilities” and place them in swing states and “basically rerun an election in each of those states.” He also traveled to the South Carolina home of conservative lawyer Lin Wood in November 2020, where Mr. Wood has said meetings were held to discuss possible ways to influence the election results in Georgia and elsewhere. The special grand jury also recommended charges for Wood.

Mr. Trump, the early front-runner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, blasted the report on his Truth Social site, saying, “They wanted to indict anybody who happened to be breathing at the time.”

Mr. Graham, who has denied any wrongdoing, said, “It should never be a crime for a federal elected official, particularly the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, who will have to vote to certify a presidential election, to question and ensure the integrity of that election.”

Mr. Loeffler, who has stayed involved in politics by founding and funding a Republican-aligned group called Greater Georgia, said she was speaking up for people who felt disenfranchised in the 2020 election. “Trying to jail your party’s leading political opponent ahead of 2024 is election interference. Speaking out in defense of election integrity is not,” she said on social media website X (formerly Twitter).

Mr. Flynn pointed to his lawyer Jesse Binnall’s post on X: “General Michael Flynn will continue to fight for the truth, for America First principles, and for Donald Trump’s return to The White House in 2024.”

Mr. Wood, who spoke before the special grand jury after receiving a subpoena, said he did nothing wrong: “It seems unfair to me that I get smeared as someone that is recommended for indictment when the people with the power to look at the evidence and indict did not indict me.”

Representatives for Mr. Perdue didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

The special grand jury foreperson, Emily Kohrs, spoke of her experience in an interview with The Associated Press in February that was followed by interviews in other print and television news outlets. She said the panel recommended multiple people be indicted but declined to name names, citing a judge’s decision not to release the full report at that time.

While Mr. Kohrs’ whirlwind media tour was attacked by Mr. Trump’s lawyers at the time and raised fears among some Mr. Trump critics that it could jeopardize the investigation, the judge overseeing the special grand jury made clear that grand jurors are free to talk about anything but their deliberations.

The panel spent seven months hearing from some 75 witnesses before completing a report in December with recommendations for Mr. Willis on charges.

The release of the identities of people recommended for indictment is a departure from ordinary grand jury protocol, which dictates that prosecutors do not disclose the names of individuals investigated but not charged so as to prevent potentially innocent subjects from being unduly maligned.

Special grand juries in Georgia are relatively uncommon and are essentially an investigative tool. They can subpoena witnesses and evidence but do not have the power to bring an indictment. Instead, they can produce a report with recommendations that are not binding on a district attorney, who can then seek an indictment from a regular grand jury.

The special grand jury’s report is based on the testimony of the witnesses prosecutors called and the evidence they presented over about seven months last year. In their report, the grand jurors made clear that the panel “contained no election law experts or criminal lawyers.”

Of the 19 people ultimately indicted, only one was not included in the special grand jury’s recommendations. A former White House aide who served as the director of Trump’s Election Day operations, Michael Roman, was involved in efforts to put forth a set of fake electors after the 2020 election.

Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney ordered the partial release of the report in February but declined to immediately release the panel’s recommendations on who should or should not be prosecuted. The judge said at the time that he wanted to protect people’s due process rights.

Mr. McBurney said in a new order filed Aug. 28 that the due process concerns were moot since a regular grand jury had indicted Trump and 18 other people under the state’s anti-racketeering law. All have pleaded not guilty.

Many of those indicted — including former New York Mayor and Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani and Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows — are known to have testified before the special grand jury. Mr. Trump was never called.

The parts of the report previously released in February included its conclusions, as well as a section with the grand jurors expressing concerns that one or more witnesses may have lied under oath and urging prosecutors to seek charges for perjury.