SEOUL (AP) – South Korean activists said they clashed with police while launching balloons carrying anti-Pyongyang propaganda materials across the North Korean border, ignoring their government’s plea to stop such activities since the North has threatened to respond with “deadly” retaliation.
Park Sang-hak, a North Korean defector-turned-activist, said his group had launched about eight balloons from an area in the South Korean border town of Paju on Saturday night when police officers arrived at the scene and prevented them from sending their 12 remaining balloons.
Park said police confiscated materials and detained him and three other members of his group over mild scuffles with officers before releasing them after questioning.
Officials at the Paju police and the northern Gyeonggi provincial police agencies didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
The balloons flown toward North Korea carried masks, Tylenol and Vitamin C tablets along with propaganda materials, including booklets praising South Korea’s economic wealth and democratic society and hundreds of USB sticks containing videos of United States Congress members denouncing the North’s human rights record, Park said.
One of the balloons carried a placard that read, “Entire humanity denounces Kim Jong-un who threatens to preemptively strike (South Korea) with nuclear missiles”, referring to the North Korean leader’s escalatory nuclear doctrine that’s raising tensions with neighbours.
Saturday’s launch came weeks after South Korea’s government pleaded for activists to stop their balloon launches, citing concerns related to the safety of border area residents.
Lee Hyo-jung, spokesperson of Seoul’s Unification Ministry, then said that the South would also “sternly respond” to any North Korean retaliation over the balloons.
Animosity between the Koreas has worsened this year as North Korea ramped up its missile testing activity to record pace and punctuated those tests with warnings that it would pre-emptively use its nukes in a broad range of scenarios where it perceives its leadership has come under threat.
North Korea is extremely sensitive to outside criticism about the Kim family’s authoritarian rule of its people, most of whom have little access to foreign news. It has berated South Korea’s current conservative government for letting South Korean civilian activists fly anti-Pyongyang propaganda leaflets and other “dirty waste” across the border by balloon, even dubiously claiming the items caused its COVID-19 outbreak.
For years, Park has floated helium-filled balloons with leaflets and other propaganda material harshly criticising the Kim family.
He also began sending masks, medicine and vitamins following the emergence of COVID-19.
Last year, South Korea, under its previous liberal government that sought to improve inter-Korean ties, enforced a contentious new law criminalising civilian leafleting campaigns. Park still kept launching balloons, becoming the first person to be indicted over that law.
