SoKor urges NoKor to scrap propaganda leaflets
SEOUL (AP) — South Korea yesterday urged North Korea to scrap a plan to launch propaganda leaflets across the border, after North Korea said it was ready to float 12 million leaflets in what would be the largest such psychological campaign against its southern rival.
Animosities on the Korean Peninsula rose sharply last week, after North Korea destroyed an interKorean liaison office on its territory in anger over South Korean civilian leafleting against it.
North Korea said it would fly propaganda leaflets and take other steps to nullify 2018 deals to ease tensions at the border.
Yoh Sangkey, a spokesman at Seoul’s Unification Ministry, told reporters that North Korea must suspend its plan to send anti-Seoul leaflets that “are not helpful to South-North (Korea) relations at all.”
Earlier yesterday, North Korea said it had manufactured 12 million propaganda leaflets to be floated toward South Korea aboard 3,000 balloons and other unspecified delivery equipment.
“Our plan of distributing the leaflets against the enemy is an eruption of the unquenchable anger of all the people and the whole society,” North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency said. “The time for retaliatory punishment is drawing near.”
Some observers said ongoing weather conditions are not favorable for North Korea to fly propaganda balloons to South Korea so it may use drones to launch them.
They added that this could trigger clashes between the Koreas because South Korea must respond to incoming drones to its territory.
South Korean Defense Minister Jeong Kyeong-doo told lawmakers yesterday that how his military responds to potential North Korean leafleting depends on what delivery equipment the North would use.
A South Korean activist recently said he would also drop about a million leaflets over the border around Thursday, the 70th anniversary of the start of the 1950-53 Korean War. South Korean officials have said they would ban civilian activists from launching balloons toward North Korea.