A dozen North Korean defectors launched balloons carrying about 50,000 anti-Pyongyang leaflets across the border with North Korea Sunday, attempting to publicize that a high-profile defector and a unification activist have become South Korean lawmakers, contrary to widespread belief among North Koreans that they are imprisoned.
The leaflets contained news of the parliamentary elections of Cho Myung-chul, who formerly taught economics at the North's most prestigious Kim Il-sung University, and Lim Su-kyung, a female pro-unification activist known for making an illegal trip to Pyongyang in the late 1980s, said the activists.
Cho and Lim won proportional representation seats by the ruling Saenuri Party and the main opposition Democratic United Party, respectively, in April's general elections. In doing so, Cho became the only defector ever elected to public office in South Korea, home to more than 23,500 North Korean defectors.
Park Sang-hak, who organized the campaign, said North Korea had told its people Lim has been languishing in prison since returning home from making her unauthorized trip to Pyongyang in 1989 and meeting then leader Kim Il-sung, the North's founder and grandfather of current leader Kim Jong-un. North Koreans are reportedly given similarly distorted news about Cho.
Park said he launched balloons carrying the leaflets "to inform North Koreans that North Korea constantly issues false propaganda to its people."
Park met with Lim in 1989 when he was a college student in North Korea and later heard from state propaganda that she was sentenced to life in prison after returning home from Pyongyang. (Yonhap)