Search Results for: fighters for a free north korea

It seems that North Korea is very serious about stopping the Fighters for A Free North Korea from releasing balloons with copies of “The Interview” on it:

North Korea on Sunday renewed its threats against a South Korean civic group’s plan to send anti-Pyongyang fliers across the border via balloon, warning it will use “all the firepower strike means” to destroy them.

The message, posted as an open notice by the frontline units of the North’s Korean People’s Army (KPA), came about a week after a leading activist in Seoul reaffirmed his intent to scatter materials criticizing the communist regime across the border around March 26.

The date marks the 5th anniversary of Pyongyang’s torpedoing of the South Korean corvette Cheonan.

Park Sang-hak, head of the activist group, said earlier this month he and other North Korean defectors would release balloons holding 500,000 leaflets, as well as DVDs of the U.S. film “The Interview,” a comedy depicting a fictitious assassination of the North’s leader Kim Jong-un.

According to the North’s state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), the KPA’s open notice said the campaign “deliberately (escalates) tension on the Korean peninsula where the situation has reached the brink of war” on top of the annual Seoul-Washington military drills that kicked off March 2.

Should the campaign be carried out, the North’s frontline army will “blow up” the balloons with “all the firepower strike means,” it said, adding that any countermeasures will “entail double and treble merciless retaliatory strikes.”

In October the two Koreas exchanged gunfire after the North attempted to shoot down balloons carrying similar leaflets. South Korea suffered no casualties or property damage.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link, but the group should just secretly fly the balloons across the border so the North Koreans do not have a chance to retaliate against them if they are dead set on doing this.

The headline of this article is how 14 North Korean airman died during the unsuccessful 2009 rocket launch:

North Korea revealed Tuesday it lost 14 airmen while launching a long-range rocket in 2009, in a report on an inspection by the country’s leader, Kim Jong-un, of a related military unit Monday.

Kim looked around a monument to honor the “stalwart fighters, who displayed the suicidal-attack spirit” at Unit 447 of the Air and Anti-Air Force, reported the North’s official Korean Central News Agency.

The monument commemorates the “heroic feats performed by the 14 fighter pilots in the operation to ensure the successful launch of satellite Kwangmyongsong-2,” said the KCNA. It did not specify how they died.

In April 2009, Kim observed the launch of the rocket, which Pyongyang claims was aimed at sending a satellite into orbit, along with his father and then-leader Kim Jong-il. The launch was unsuccessful.

Kim praised Unit 447 as the “high pride” of the country.  [Korea Herald]

I can only guess how this many people died during a rocket launch.  Did the launch go off unexpectedly early and workers were still near the pad?  Who knows.  However what I found of the most interest is how Kim Jong-un is emphasizing tree planting:

He said the unit also needs to play a role in leading in his campaign for forest restoration, according to the KCNA.

He planted ginkgo and other types of trees himself during his so-called field guidance at the unit on Monday, which the KCNA called a significant tree-planting day.

This is actually something I would not mind the international community helping the North Koreans with.  Sending tree huggers international workers to help plant trees in North Korea would have huge environmental payoffs and over time would be one less thing the South Korean government would have to worry about when unification comes.  This seems like better engagement with North Korea than giving free food to their military or free money to the regime to buy luxury items.

This isn’t the first or will be the last of the assassination threats that North Korea has made against balloon activist Park Sang-hak:

North Korea issued a death threat against a defector-turned-activist after he announced a plan to send copies of a satirical Hollywood film about a plot to kill Kim Jong-un into North Korea.

The South Korean government said Thursday it will take necessary measures to protect its citizens.

Last week, Park Sang-hak, who heads the Fighters for a Free North Korea, said he planned to send 100,000 DVDs and USB memory sticks containing the movie “The Interview” via balloons across the border into North Korea to destroy the personality cult build around Kim Jong-un.

He said the Sony Pictures’ movie will have Korean subtitles and he will start sending the balloons as early as late January.

According to the Ministry of Unification, the North aired an ultimatum against Park on Wednesday. Using extremely cruel language, the North’s Pyongyang Broadcasting Station said Park must “go to hell.”

It promised to “bleed him out and gut his intestines.”

“In order to end this tragic reality of national division forced upon our people and homeland by outside forces, we must ruthlessly eliminate those maniacs who encourage inter-Korean confrontations,” the broadcast said. “And the Korean people select Park as the first target.”  [Joong Ang Ilbo]

You can read more at the link, but hopefully Park Sang-hak has taken the appropriate security measures to protect himself from North Korean assassins.  Back in 2011 a North Korean assassin was arrested before he could carry out his plot to kill Park with poison needles.

A ROK Drop favorite Park Sang-hak and his activist allies plan on dropping copies of the now cancelled Hollywood movie “The Interview” over North Korea if they can get a copy of the film:

Human Rights Foundation founder Thor Halvorssen says the group plans on buying copies of “The Interview” — which depicts the assassination of North Korea’s leader — and including them in upcoming balloon drops over North Korea. The group is waiting to hear whether Sony will release the movie in an alternate format since it canceled plans to release the film in theaters. (On Wednesday, Sony said it had no further plans for release.)

For the last two years, the Human Rights Foundation has been working with groups in South Korea to drop balloons into the North that are filled with banned items.

HRF has teamed up with Park Sang Hak, who worked for the North Korean government before defecting to South Korea. He is now the chairman of an activist group, Fighters for a Free North Korea, and has successfully led multiple balloon launches into North Korea.

Park told CNNMoney it’s a wider effort to help North Koreans gain access to different perspectives. And that perspective may soon include the controversial film that North Korea has condemned.  [CNN]

You can read more at the link, but this is another possible response to the Sony hack which would be to help fund defector groups to get subversive media into North Korea.

Same old same old from the North Koreans:

The two Koreas on Wednesday held closed-door high-level military talks in the inter-Korean border village of Panmunjeom only to find the wide gaps in their views over a set of pending defense issues, Seoul’s Defense Ministry said.

During the talks at the South-controlled Peace House, the two sides failed to bridge the gaps over the issues of heightened tensions surrounding the Northern Limit Line, a de facto sea border, anti-Pyongyang leaflets and other sensitive issues.

After the unfruitful meeting, Seoul’s Unification Ministry announced that it had proposed holding the second round of high-level inter-Korean talks at Tongilgak, a building on the North Korean side of Panmunjeom, on Oct. 30.

The proposal was sent to the North two days earlier, but the North had yet to respond to it. During a surprise visit by the high-level North Korean delegation to the Incheon Asian Games on Oct. 4, the two sides agreed to resume high-level talks, which were last held in February.  [Korea Herald]

You can read more at the link, but the North Koreans basically want the ROK to stop Park Sang-hak and his crew from launching their propaganda balloons and to give up the NLL for nothing in return.

Park Sang-hak and the Fighters for a Free North Korea are planning on launching more leaflets to North Korea despite the Moon administration’s vows to stop them:

A North Korean defector group said Friday it plans to send thousands of leaflets to North Korea next week despite a recently enacted ban on such leafleting.

Park Sang-hak, a defector who heads Fighters for a Free North Korea, told Yonhap News Agency on Friday that his group plans to send leaflets across the border at an unannounced time and location from this Sunday to May 1.

“The leaflets will include a message criticizing their three-generation hereditary dictatorship and telling them to give out at least the minimum amount of food required for North Korean people,” he said.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but I guess we will see if the Moon administration decides to jail these activists or not. The new law they past can give people up to three years in jail for sending leaflets to North Korea. Park Sang-hak is probably hoping they try and do that to highlight how authoritarian the law is.

 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. .

It was pretty clear that once the Moon administration came to power that the Korean left would find a way to put a true democracy activist like Park Sang-hak in jail:

Prosecutors have indicted the leader of an anti-North Korea leaflet campaign for alleged assault against journalists, officials said Thursday.

Park Sang-hak, 52, the head of Fighters for a Free North Korea, was charged on Nov. 25 with beating and throwing bricks at producers and crew from the broadcaster SBS on June 23. They visited his home in southern Seoul to interview him about the leafleting campaign but are said to have sustained injuries from his attack.

The North Korean defector is also accused of firing a tear gas gun at police officers who were dispatched to the scene following a report.

The Seoul Eastern District Prosecutors Office charged Park on four counts, including assault and obstruction of justice.

Regarding Park’s complaints against the SBS employees over housebreaking, the prosecutors did not charge one of them and suspended indictment for three others. 

Meanwhile, Park is currently under a separate prosecution investigation on charges of violating the Inter-Korean Exchange and Cooperation Act by sending propaganda leaflets into the North.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but Kim Yo-jong complained about the balloon launches to the Moon administration and shortly after the balloon launches were criminalized. Then the reporters break into house late at night for a so called interview. 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. What was he supposed to do get tea for the people that broke into his property late at night?

ROK Heads may remember that Park Sang-hak who leads the defector group, Fighters for a Free North Korea has been subject to assassination attempts before by North Korea. The ROK media appears eager to help North Korea finish the job.

The balloon activists have appeared to have given into not North Korean threats, but rather South Korean governmental pressure for the vague hope that North Korea will agree to Inter-Korean talks:

South Korean activists pledged Monday to continue their anti-North Korea leaflet campaign in a low-key manner for the time being, despite a growing inter-Korean feud over the sensitive issue.

A number of activist groups, including the key player Fighters for a Free North Korea (FFNK), have often launched balloons carrying propaganda leaflets across the border to spread anti-Pyongyang messages targeting the North Korean leader and the country’s dictatorship.

The propaganda campaign, often preannounced and widely covered by local and overseas media, has recently been at the center of the inter-Korean row, with North Korea threatening not to hold dialogue with the South unless it is stopped.

“In the future, the spreading of anti-North leaflets by defector groups will be conducted behind the scenes, taking into consideration more effective methods (of campaigns) as well as the safety of residents (at the border area) and direction of the wind,” the activist groups said in a statement.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link.