Release the Balloons!

All this talk of balloons floating over North Korea and all the roil it is causing, reminds me of Nena’s #1 hit single “99 Luftballons” from the 80’s.  It is balloon warfare at it’s best.

The original song in German was a protest against the nuclear missile stand off between western europe and eastern europe; the United States against the Soviet Union.

As Korea is today, Germany was then a divided country.  The song reached #1 in West Germany in 1983.

It portrays a fictional account of how a cloud of balloons mistaken for an aerial missile attack might touch off an apocalyptic war.

Could the recent cloud of balloons over DPRK, each carrying thousands of leaflets, radios and sometimes dollars, cause a war?  Or, could it cause a different type of an end?

Each of those packets contain not just mere words, but information.  And the one thing that an authoritarian regime like North Korea fears the most is that it’s people will start to open their eyes to receive and believe in information from the outside.

Could this be the time when the masses are actually receptive to information?  The military seems to think so and wants it to stop.