A trash balloon from North Korea landed on a Seoul building rooftop and caused a fire, a local fire department said, among thousands of balloons Pyongyang has sent southward this year, sparking a tit-for-tat propaganda campaign.
“At around 9.04pm local time on Sunday, a fire broke out on the rooftop of a four-storey commercial building in the Western district of Seoul,” Seoul’s Gangseo Fire Station said in a statement yesterday.
The fire was extinguished in 18 minutes and 15 fire trucks and 56 personnel were deployed, said the fire department, adding there were no casualties.
Military and police authorities collected the balloon, which was being investigated.
Pyongyang launched about 120 trash-filled balloons towards the border late Sunday, following 50 balloons that were sent on Saturday, South Korea’s military said yesterday.
Around 40 of the balloons had already landed in the South, mainly in northern Gyeonggi province and the capital Seoul, the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said.
The bags attached to those balloons contained “mostly paper and plastic waste”, the JCS said, adding that they posed no safety risk to the public.
Timer devices on trash balloons caused fires earlier this month, with one near an airport and another at a storage unit.
“Some North Korean trash balloons have thermal timers that could potentially cause fires if they don’t separate properly when the heating wire is activated, which acts to detach the balloon from its load,” said JCS spokesperson Lee Chang-hyun.
“We have seen it being described as a ‘timer explosion’, but we would like to explain again that the method is where a thermal timer heats the balloon’s material, causing it to tear apart in mid-air,” he added.
Lee also said “shooting down the balloons in the air increases the risk of falling debris or hazardous materials, so for now, the safest approach is considered to be quickly collecting them after they fall naturally”. — AFP
