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| A balloon carrying images of North Korean ruling Kim family members is found in Hongcheon, Gangwon Province, Tuesday. It was one of 20 balloons that were flown by a North Korean defectors' group here, Monday night. / Yonhap |
By Kang Seung-woo
A North Korean defectors' group floated hundreds of thousands of anti-North Korea leaflets across the border, Monday night, adding fuel to the already-tense situation on the Korean Peninsula.
In response, the police are set to apprehend those who were involved in the campaign that the government believes violates the Inter-Korean Exchange and Cooperation Act
According to Fighters for a Free North Korea (FFNK), it floated 20 balloons carrying 500,000 anti-Pyongyang leaflets across the border from Paju, Gyeonggi Province.
FFNK Chairman Park Sang-hak, said 500 pamphlets depicting the South's success story, 2,000 U.S. one-dollar bills and 1,000 SD cards were also sent to the North, along with the leaflets. Usually, the leaflets criticize the authoritarian regime and urge North Korean people to revolt against their leader Kim Jong-un.
The distribution of leaflets by activists as well as North Korean defectors has long been a major source of tension between the two Koreas as it has led to exchanges of fire in the past. It has taken center stage again recently after Kim Yo-jong, the North Korean leader's sister and probably the second-most powerful person in the country, complained of the leaflet campaigns earlier this month, threatening to cancel a military agreement signed during the inter-Korean summit, April 27, 2018.
Since then, the North's state-run media have slammed the South Korean government's "failure" to stop the "regime-threatening" campaign, and the authorities here have also shown a stern attitude toward the organizers for "causing" inter-Korean tension.
Following the government's pledge to crack down on the leaflet sending campaign, the FFNK secretly flew the balloons unlike in earlier open events.
On Tuesday morning, one of the balloons was found near a stream in Hongcheon, Gangwon Province, according to police.
In response, the unification ministry, which plans to legislate a ban on the leaflet campaign, once again urged the defectors' group to stop.
"The government believes that the unproductive distribution of leaflets must be immediately halted to improve inter-Korean relations and promote peace on the Korean Peninsula," a ministry official said, Tuesday.
The police are also planning to investigate the FFNK.
In retaliation to the leaflet campaigns, the North is reinstalling propaganda speakers along the border and preparing to send anti-South Korea leaflets as moves toward canceling the tension-diffusing military pact.
The loudspeakers and leaflets, used to broadcast anti-Seoul messages and praise its own political system, were common Cold War-era psychological warfare tools.
Following the April 27 summit, the two Koreas agreed to stop all hostile acts along the border including loudspeaker broadcasting and the scattering of leaflets. As a result, both disassembled their speakers in multiple border areas.
Since Sunday, the South Korean military authorities have detected North Korea setting up loudspeakers in multiple places along the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ). In addition, the North's Korean Central News Agency has threatened to send around 12 million propaganda leaflets to the South.
Speculation is that Pyongyang may start the anti-Seoul broadcasting and leaflet sending around the 70th anniversary of the Korean War that falls Thursday.
In response to the North's envisaged provocations, the South Korean military remains cautious as countermeasures, including reinstalling its own speakers, could lead to an accidental clash.
On Aug. 20, 2015, the North fired two rockets over the border toward the speakers and the South responded with dozens of artillery rounds. In addition, the North Korean military shot down leaflet balloons floated by FFNK, Oct. 10, 2014, resulting in an exchange of machine-gun fire.
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