Search Results for: park sang-hak

A ROK Drop favorite Park Sang-hak and other North Korean defectors have had security measures improved for them when the ROK National Intelligence Service (NIS) learned of specific information about North Korean terror and assassination attempts within the ROK.  In the case of Park Sang-hak the North Koreans have tried to kill him before:

Following the latest intelligence assessment that North Korea is planning terrorist attacks against the South, security measures to protect high-value targets including influential defectors have been beefed up.

The National Police Agency has reinforced the security detail for former North Korean diplomat Ko Young-hwan, vice president of the Institute for National Security Strategy of the National Intelligence Service (NIS). He was put under the highest level of monitoring, as the intelligence community obtained a death threat from the North.

Ko served in the North’s Foreign Ministry from 1978 to 1991. He defected from his post as the first secretary of the North Korean Embassy in the Republic of Congo in 1991.

“I was told by the police that they had obtained specific threats,” Ko told Yonhap News Agency. “I was normally guarded by two agents, but the number has increased to eight.”

The police also improved security measures for Park Sang-hak, a North Korean defector currently leading the campaign to send anti-Pyongyang leaflets across the border using balloons.

The North has previously assassinated a high-profile defector in the South. Yi Han-yong, nephew of the late North Korean leader Kim Jong-il’s mistress Song Hye-rim, defected to the South in 1982 while studying in Switzerland. He was shot in February 1997 by two assailants suspected of being agents from North Korean special forces. He died in a hospital later that month.

The NIS informed the government and the ruling party Thursday that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un had ordered the country’s intelligence agencies to prepare for terror attacks against the South. In addition to threats on cyberattacks and attacks on public facilities, assassination and kidnapping of high-value targets were also feared.   [Joong Ang lbo]

You can read more at the link.

The balloon wars between North and South Korea continue:

A North Korean defectors’ group said Thursday it has sent about 10 large plastic balloons carrying propaganda leaflets against the North Korean regime across the border, raising concerns Pyongyang could resume sending trash-filled balloons. 

Filled with 200,000 flyers criticizing the regime, dollar bills and USB sticks loaded with K-pop and trot music, the balloons were floated from Pocheon, north of Seoul, early Thursday, according to Park Sang-hak, head of the Fighters for a Free North Korea (FFNK).

A military source confirmed that some of these balloons have flown into the North but said no signs of retaliatory action were detected yet from the North Korean side, including any launch of ballistic missiles or release of balloons loaded with trash.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but I guess we will see if this leads to more trash attacks from North Korea in response.

This is a lesson from dictatorship 101, you have to control the flow of information to the people to maintain regime control; the balloon flights challenge this control:

Park Sang-hak, a North Korean defector-turned-activist and founder of the advocacy group Fighters for a Free North Korea, holds up propaganda material condemning North Korean leader Kim Jong-un for developing nuclear weapons and missiles without feeding the country’s hungry residents in this April 2021 photo. Courtesy of Fighters for a Free North Korea

Pyongyang has belatedly reacted furiously to South Korean Constitutional Court’s decision in September to strike down the ban on sending propaganda leaflets over the border into North Korea.

In a statement released in November, North Korea’s Central News Agency (KCNA) said the court’s decision signals a de facto war against the North as information warfare is part of an operation preceding a ground war.

Calling North Korean defectors who flew the leaflets across the border “garbage,” the KCNA said that North Korea’s firing of anti-aircraft rounds across the border in 2014 and its destroying of the inter-Korean liason office used for talks between the two countries in 2020 are two chilling reminders of what South Korea could face. 

In 2014, North Korea used anti-aircraft guns to shoot down balloons carrying anti-Pyongyang leaflets flown by South Korean activists near the border town of Yeoncheon. 

North Korea’s furious reaction to the court’s lifting of the ban on sending propaganda leaflets into the North reflects the regime fears its people being exposed to outside information.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

Park Sang-hak’s group Fighters for a Free North Korea are once again sending leaflets to North Korea:

A North Korean defectors’ group said Monday it has sent anti-Pyongyang leaflets and medicine by balloons to the North, as they marked the 73rd anniversary of the outbreak of the Korean War.

Park Sang-hak, head of the Fighters for a Free North Korea (FFNK), told Yonhap News Agency that the organization sent 20 balloons carrying some 200,000 leaflets, 10,000 face masks, Tylenol pills and booklets from Gimpo, west of Seoul, at 10 p.m. on Sunday.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but ROK Heads may remember that Park Sang-hak has been the victim of multiple assassination attempts by North Korean agents and assaulted by Korean leftists. He has also had leftists intrude at his house and has been repeatedly arrested and harassed by the Moon administration in effort to stop his group’s activities. 

The Yoon administration has decided to crackdown on Park Sang-hak and his Fighters for a Free North Korea:

 South Korean activists say 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 he his group had launched about eight balloons from an area in the South Korean border town of Paju Saturday night when police officers arrived at the scene and prevented them from sending their 12 remaining balloons. Park said police confiscated some of their 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 Sunday.

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 U.S. Congress members denouncing the North’s human rights record, Park said.

Associated Press

You can read more at the link.

Park Sang-hak is taking advantage of the change in government in South Korea to ramp up his balloon launch activities again after being largely silenced by the previous Moon administration:

An activist said he has again flown huge balloons carrying COVID-19 relief items and an anti-North Korea placard across the tense inter-Korean border, despite the North’s recent warning of a deadly attack over his activities.

Park Sang-hak, a North Korean defector-turned-activist, said the 20 balloons launched from a South Korean border town on Sunday carried 20,000 masks and tens of thousands of Tylenol and Vitamin C tablets.

He said one of the balloons carried a placard with a message that reads “Let’s eradicate Kim Jong Un and (his sister) Kim Yo Jong,” along with their photos. He said no other propaganda statements were carried by the balloons.

For years, Park has floated helium-filled balloons with numerous, small anti-Pyongyang leaflets with harsh criticism of the Kim family’s authoritarian rule in North Korea. But he’s recently changed his cargo to masks and other health products amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link.