South Korea on Tuesday took steps to suspend a contentious military agreement with North Korea and resume frontline military activities, as tensions between the rivals are rising over the North's recent launch of trash-carrying balloons.

North Korea didn't immediately respond, but South Korea's resumption of firing exercises or propaganda loudspeaker broadcasts will likely prompt North Korea to take similar or stronger steps along the rivals' tense border.

In the past week, North Korea has used balloons to drop manure, cigarette butts, scraps of cloth and waste paper on South Korea, prompting Seoul to vow "unbearable" retaliation. On Sunday, North Korea said it would halt its balloon campaign.

NORTH KOREA AGREES TO STOP SENDING BALLOONS WITH MANURE, TRASH TO SOUTH KOREA

On Tuesday, South Korea’s Cabinet Council and President Yoon Suk Yeol approved a proposal to suspend the 2018 inter-Korean agreement on lowering frontline military tensions. It will take effect once Seoul formally notifies the North.

Cho Chang-rae, South Korea’s deputy defense minister for policy, told reporters that South Korea will use all available measures to protect the public from North Korean provocations.

"The responsibility for this situation lies solely with North Korea. If North Korea launches additional provocations, our military, in conjunction with the solid the South Korea-U.S. defense posture, will punish North Korea swiftly, strongly and to the end," Cho said.

The military agreement — reached during a short-lived era of reconciliation between the Koreas — required the two countries to cease all hostile acts at border areas, such as live firing drills, aerial drills and psychological warfare.

During the cabinet meeting, Prime Minister Han Duck-soo, South Korea’s No. 2 official, said the 2018 deal has weakened South Korean military readiness at a time when the North's provocations pose real threats to the public. Han cited North Korea’s balloon campaign,tests of nuclear-capable weapons targeting South Korea, and alleged jamming of GPS navigation signals in the South.

South Korean officials said the suspension of the 2018 deal would allow it to stage frontline military drills but didn’t publicly elaborate on other steps. Observers say South Korea was considering restarting frontline propaganda loudspeaker broadcasts, a Cold War-style psychological campaign that experts say has stung in rigidly controlled North Korea, whose 26 million people are mostly not allowed access to foreign news.

The 2018 deal was already in limbo after the two Koreas took some steps in breach of it amid tensions over North Korea’s spy satellite launch last November.

NASHVILLE - After Oklahoma cold case investigators helped her uncover an entry in serial killer Dennis Rader’s diary suggesting he abused her when she was too young to remember, she confronted him behind bars.

Kerri Rawson visited her dad, better known as BTK for his self-styled moniker - bind, torture, kill - in a Kansas prison in October. It was the fifth time she’d spoken to him since he pleaded guilty to killing 10 in 2005.

"I sat feet across from you; you crumbled up, rotting away in a wheelchair, me standing tall and brave, and confronted you with the hard bare truth you had kept hidden from me for over four decades," she revealed on stage at CrimeCon 2024 in Nashville, Tennessee. "You denied it, gas lit me, emotionally and verbally abused me, asked me what PTSD is; and then when I explained, told me, I had brought this all on myself."

Rawson, who became a victims advocate in the wake of her father’s murder spree, said her dad grew furious from his wheelchair.

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"I thought for a minute I was sixteen again, fleeing your angry fists — I did get up and flee for a bit at the prison," she said. "But I came back, sat down, and confronted you harder."

Rawson agreed to voluntarily assist the Osage County, Oklahoma Sheriff’s Office in the decades-old death of Cynthia Dawn Kinney last year. Sheriff Eddie Virden has said he believes Rader may have been responsible.

Investigators asked Rawson to help decipher some hard-to-read passages in his notes, and she came across her own name written in capital letters: "KERRI/BND/GAME 1981."

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"BND" is her father’s shorthand for bondage, she said, a method he deployed on the 10 innocent people he tied up and killed

"My stomach twisted into white hot lightning," she said. "There it was, after four decades, hard proof that you, my father, had sexually abused me when I was a toddler."

She said she found more similar notations later.

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After reading them, she said, she believes that her father attacked more than the 10 victims he admitted to killing.

Rader kept notes on all of his victims as well as other people, which he referred to as "projects." Virden suspects that the project titled "Bad Laundry Day" may be a reference to the Kinney case. The teen was last seen alive at her aunt and uncle’s laundromat.

Rader, in previous letters to Fox News Digital, has denied any involvement in slayings other than the ones he pleaded guilty to. He could not immediately be reached for comment regarding his daughter's revelations.

He is in poor health, his daughter said, using a wheelchair and recovering from a broken hip and other ailments.

"Soon you will meet your maker," she said, speaking to her absent father from the stage. "You're going to have a few things to discuss. You will be gone soon. It is my last request of you, to give up the ghosts, if any remain."