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South Korea fully suspending military pact with North Korea over trash balloons
Seoul, South Korea — Seoul will fully suspend a 2018 tension-reducing military deal with nuclear-armed North Korea, the South’s National Security Council said Monday, after Pyongyang sent hundreds of trash-filled balloons across the border.
Seoul partially suspended the agreement last year after the North put a spy satellite into orbit, but the NSC said it would tell the cabinet “to suspend the entire effect of the ‘September 19 Military Agreement’ until mutual trust between the two Koreas is restored.”
In the last week, Pyongyang has sent nearly a thousand balloons carrying garbage including cigarette butts and likely manure into the South in what it says was retaliation for missives bearing anti-regime propaganda organized by activists in the South.
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South Korea has called the latest provocation from its neighbor “irrational” and “low-class” but, unlike the spate of recent ballistic missile launches, the trash campaign doesn’t violate U.N. sanctions on Kim Jong Un’s isolated government.
The North called off the balloon bombardment Sunday, saying it had been an effective countermeasure, but warned that more could come if needed.
The 2018 military deal, signed during a period of warmer ties between the two countries that remain technically at war, aimed to reduce tensions on the peninsula and avoid an accidental escalation, especially along the heavily fortified border.
But after Seoul partially suspended the agreement in November last year to protest Pyongyang’s successful spy satellite launch, the North said it would no longer honor the deal at all.
As a result, Seoul’s NSC said the deal was “virtually null and void due to North Korea’s de facto declaration of abandonment” anyway, but that abiding by the remainder of it was disadvantaging the South in terms of their ability to respond to threats like the balloons.
Respecting the agreement “is causing significant issues in our military’s readiness posture, especially in the context of a series of recent provocations by North Korea that pose real damage and threats to our citizens,” it said.
The move will allow “military training in the areas around the Military Demarcation Line,” it said, and enable “more sufficient and immediate responses to North Korean provocations.”
The decision needs to be approved by a cabinet meeting set for Tuesday before it takes effect.
Ties between the two Koreas are at one of their lowest points in years, with diplomacy long stalled and Kim Jong Un ramping up his weapons testing and development, while the South draws closer Washington, its main security ally.
Seoul’s decision to jettison the 2018 tension-reducing deal shows “that it will not tolerate trash balloons coming across the border, considering international norms and the terms of the truce,” said Hong Min, a senior analyst at the Korea Institute for National Unification in Seoul.
“However, it could further provoke Pyongyang when it is impossible to physically block the balloons drifting southwards in the air,” he said.
South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said the balloons weren’t found to contain hazardous materials but had been landing in northern provinces, including the capital Seoul and the adjacent area of Gyeonggi, that are collectively home to nearly half of South Korea’s population.
South Korean officials have also said Seoul wouldn’t 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, with experts warning a resumption could even lead to skirmishes along the border.
The world’s oldest mummies have been around longer than the mummified pharaohs of Egypt and their ornate tombs — but the ravages of time, human development and climate change are putting these relics at risk.
Chile’s Atacama Desert was once home to the Chincorro people, an ancient population that began mummifying their dead 5,000 years ago, two millennia before the Egyptians did, according to Bernando Arriaza, a professor at the University of Tarapaca.
The arid desert has preserved mummified remains and other clues in the environment that give archaeologists information about how the Chincorro people once lived.
The idea to mummify bodies likely came from watching other remains naturally undergo the process amid the desert’s dry conditions. The mummified bodies were also decorated with reed blankets, clay masks, human hair and more, according to archaeologists.
While UNESCO has designated the region as a World Heritage Site, the declaration may not save all of the relics. Multiple museums, including the Miguel de Azapa Archaeological Museum in the ancient city of Arica, put the Chincorro culture on display. Some mummies and other relics are safely ensconced in those climate-controlled exhibits, but the remains still hidden in the arid desert remain at risk.
“If we have an increase in sea surface temperatures, for example, across the coast of northern Chile, that would increase atmospheric humidity,” said Claudio LaTorre, a paleo-ecologist with the Catholic University of Chile. “And that in turn would generate decomposition, (in) places where you don’t have decomposition today, and you would lose the mummies themselves.”
Other clues that archaeologists can find in the environment may also be lost.
“Human-induced climate change is one aspect that we’re really worried about, because it’ll change a number of different aspects that are forming the desert today,” said LaTorre.
Arriaza is working to raise awareness about the mummies, hoping that that will lead to even more preservation.
“It’s a big, big challenge because you need to have resources,” Arriaza said. “It’s everybody’s effort to a common goal, to preserve the site, to preserve the mummies.”
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NEW YORK – The man accused of killing three people when drove drunk into a crowd on the Lower East Side on July 4th was arraigned on a host of charges Saturday.
Daniel Hyden of Monmouth Junction, N.J. is charged with aggravated vehicular homicide, aggravated vehicular assault, manslaughter, assault and operating a motor vehicle while intoxicated charges. Hyden was driving with a suspended license, prosecutors said.
According to prosecutors, Hyden, 44, drove a Ford F-150 pickup truck into the crowd at Corlears Hook Park just before 9 p.m. local time. He allegedly ran through a stop sign at the intersection of Water and Cherry Streets, drove up onto the sidewalk, slammed through the chain link fence, and into the crowd.
Eleven people were killed or injured, prosecutors said. The three people killed have been identified as Lucille Pinkney, 59, and her son Herman Pinkney, 38, and Ana Morel, 43. Another person was critically injured, and seven others hospitalized. The youngest victim was 11, according to prosecutors.
Responding police officers say they found Hyden on the ground next to the driver’s-side door, wearing pants but no shirt or shoes. He had bloodshot eyes, was stumbling and there was “a strong odor of an alcoholic beverage on his breath.”
“I hope we get justice”
Photos provided
On Friday, Family members of the victims returned to the scene, some breaking down in tears.
“I hope we get justice for my brother and my mother,” Diamond Pinkney said. “Herman, I love you. I’m going to do you proud.”
“We’re all devastated with this. It breaks my heart, and I’m so sad about it,” neighbor Nereida Garcia said.