By Michael Ha
Staff Reporter
The Ministry of Unification announced Wednesday that it would ask police to investigate anti-Pyongyang activist leaders if they press ahead with their plan to launch propaganda leaflets and North Korean banknotes across the border to the North.
A ministry official, along with a representative from police, met with organizers planning to launch the anti-North Korean leaflets, activists said. The two organizers who met the ministry official were Choi Sung-yong, of the Family Assembly Abducted to North Korea, and Park Sang-han, from the Fighters for Free North Korea, a group of North Korean defectors in Seoul.
During the meeting, the police official had reportedly said, ``It looks like we will have to investigate this matter."
The two activist leaders have confirmed their meeting to reporters, saying that they spoke with a ministry representative for about an hour Wednesday morning.
According to them, the official urged them to refrain from sending leaflets to the North, saying ``this is not the right time to launch propaganda materials to North Korea," alluding to the deterioration of inter-Korean relations in recent weeks.
The two men are among civic activists planning to launch hundreds of thousands of anti-North Korean leaflets tied to balloons to the North. The group said the launching would coincide with Kim Jong-il's birthday, Feb. 16.
Some of the leaflets, which denounce North Korea's totalitarian regime and predict its eventual fall, will include 5,000 North Korean-won banknotes the activists smuggled in. Organizers are hoping the currency will provide additional incentive for the regime's citizens to pick them up. Each 5,000-won banknote will be enough to buy a couple of kilograms of rice in the regime, according to activists.
But the ministry said this week it is unlawful to bring in and hold North Korean banknotes without explicit permission from the Seoul government.
According to South Korea's ``Law Regarding the Exchange and Cooperation of Inter-Korean Relations," those who illegally bring in North Korean banknotes to the South may face a jail term of up to three years or fines of up of 10 million won.