Activists launch hundreds of thousands of anti-Pyongyang leaflets towards North Korea amid rising tensions.
Defectors launch anti-Pyongyang flyers amid rising tensions
A South Korean group launched hundreds of thousands of leaflets by balloon across the border with North Korea overnight, despite Pyongyang repeatedly warning that it will retaliate against such actions.
Activist Park Sang-hak said his organisation floated 20 huge balloons carrying 500,000 leaflets, 2,000 one-dollar bills and small books on North Korea from the border town of Paju on Monday night.
Park, formerly a North Korean who fled to South Korea, said in a statement that his leafleting was “a struggle for justice for the sake of liberation of” North Koreans.
The move is certain to intensify already high tensions between the Koreas.
North Korea recently and abruptly raised its rhetoric against South Korean civilian leafleting, destroyed an empty Seoul-built liaison office on its territory and pushed to resume psychological warfare efforts against the South.
Local officials in South Korea said they were looking into the account, adding that they may ask police to investigate it as a potential safety threat to frontline residents.
Calling North Korean leader Kim Jong-un “an evil” and his rule “barbarism”, Park said he would keep sending anti-Kim leaflets.
“Though North Korean residents have become modern-day slaves with no basic rights, don’t they have the right to know the truth?” he added.
South Korean officials have vowed to ban leafleting and said they would press charges against Park and other anti-Pyongyang activists for allegedly raising animosities and potentially endangering front-line border residents.
In 2014, North Korean troops opened fire at propaganda balloons flying toward their territory, triggering an exchange of fire that caused no known causalities.