Tag: activists

I think the ROK needs to pay attention to this threat because the balloon activists are giving the Kim regime the rationale to launch a provocation:

A North Korean propaganda outlet on Saturday lashed out at defector groups for sending anti-Pyongyang leaflets, warning of a reaction that could go beyond the explosion of an inter-Korean liaison office two years ago. 

The Tongil Shinbo, a weekly North Korean publication, also criticized the Yoon Suk-yeol government for speaking out about human rights in North Korea and seeking the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. 

There could be an action that would exceed the blowup of the liaison office in its border town of Kaesong on June 16, 2020, if North Korean defector groups continue to send goods and leaflets to the North, the newspaper said.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but I find the anger over the balloon activists ironic considering for decades North Korea used to be the ones sending propaganda balloons into South Korea. I am old enough to remember when they used to do this and when the leaflets were found we had to turn them in and could not keep them.

So it begins. A "liberal" S. Korean President as Pyongyang's censor-in-residence. As Prof. Lee & I said in the NYT: https://t.co/TCAybzN12I https://t.co/FtdgvtN5Vp

— Joshua Stanton (@freekorea_us) August 5, 2017

The Interview: South Korea bans balloon drop of DVDs into North http://t.co/tPhGDM01oF

— South Korea Daily (@SouthKoreaDaily) March 20, 2015

I can understand the ROK government’s viewpoint on this, but if the activists do not get media attention for their activities then they will have a hard time receiving support to sustain their operations:

South Korea expressed concern Tuesday over civic groups’ plans to publicly send leaflets to North Korea, indicating that it will try to block them.

Days ago, a group of civic groups announced their plan to send anti-Pyongyang leaflets to North Korea on March 26, the fifth anniversary of the North’s torpedoing of a South Korean Navy ship in March 2010.

Civic groups involved in the leaflet campaign have often pre-announced their campaigns so their activities could draw media and social attention. Such campaigns intended to spread dissenting messages, however, often lead to wild indignation and military reaction from Pyongyang.

“Believing that spreading leaflets publicly is not right, the government has been urging prudent and wise decisions (from civic groups),” a unification ministry official told reporters on condition of anonymity. “I think there needs to be expression of such a government stance through whatever means, including person-to-person contact.”

Still, scattering leaflets basically falls in the sphere of a constitutionally given right to free expression, which the government cannot regulate with force, the official said.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link.

Just the fact that Pyongyang is allowing them to do this shows that they are useful idiots for the Kim regime:

Female activists from around the world will march from Pyongyang to Seoul in May to express their wish for inter-Korean peace, a global non-profit said Sunday.

The Peace Development Fund said around 30 female activists will be participating in the march, which will see them cross the heavily fortified Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) bisecting the Korean Peninsula, on May 24.

The activists include American feminist Gloria Steinem, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Mairead Maguire and Chung Hyun-kyung, a professor at Union Theological Seminary in New York, the organization said.

“Our wish is to cross the DMZ, which separates tens of millions of Korean families, on foot to express our hope for peace,” the group said in a statement.

Participants will also hold peace seminars in the two Korean capitals and discuss the role of women in reducing inter-Korean tension.

The two Koreas are technically at war since the Korean War in the 1950s ended in an armistice, not a peace treaty.  [Yonhap]

I wonder what these activists leftists will do anything to criticize North Korean human rights or even the conscription of women for 5 years in the North Korean military?

Activist Park Sang-hak is at it again, but he has decided to not send copies of the movie “The Interview” to North Korea if they decide to agree to talks with South Korea:

A group of local and foreign activists has sent balloons carrying anti-Pyongyang leaflets across the inter-Korean border, but DVDs of the controversial film “The Interview” have been excluded, the group’s head said Tuesday.

“As previously announced in November, (we) scattered 100,000 anti-North Korean leaflets near (the border town) of Paju last night,” Park Sang-hak, the head of the Fighters for a Free North Korea, told Yonhap News Agency. “The DVDs of ‘The Interview’ were not included on purpose.”

About 20 American activists, including some from the U.S.-based Human Rights Foundation, also joined the border campaign, according to officials.

Claiming the exclusion of the DVDs as a warning to North Korea, Park said the group will spread a massive amount of “The Interview” DVDs if the North is not cooperative with South Korea’s dialogue offer and its proposal for a reunion of separated families.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link.

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.

It appears that some in the Korean government want to pull a Sony and give in to North Korean threats at the expense of free speech for their citizens:

A South Korean parliamentary committee adopted a resolution Thursday calling on the government to take necessary steps to protect its citizens from any harm caused by civic activists’ flying of anti-Pyongyang leaflets across the inter-Korean border.

The resolution, adopted by the National Assembly’s foreign affairs and unification committee, also urges the two Koreas to abide by their earlier agreements to stop all slander against each other, noting it is key to building trust.

“(We) urge the government to take necessary steps so as to ensure the spread of anti-North Korea leaflets does not damage the improvement of South-North ties and jeopardize the safety of our citizens,” the resolution said.

The leaflet campaign, often led by North Korean defectors in the South, has long been a source of tension between the two Koreas as it aims to stir up dissent against the regime of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.

Seoul has long dismissed Pyongyang’s demands to ban the campaign, citing freedom of speech.

Speaking during the committee meeting, Unification Minister Ryoo Kihl-jae stressed that the government’s position remains unchanged. The government also believes it should take steps if they are needed for the people’s safety, he said.

The minister, however, ruled out a direct link between the leaflet scattering and any improvement in bilateral ties.

The government’s stance has been closely watched after the district court in Uijeongbu, just north of Seoul, ruled Tuesday that it is legal for authorities to restrain the campaign if it puts the lives of South Koreans at risk.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link.

Some farmers are upset with the activists sending the balloons into North Korea:

Lee Jae Wook raised the scoop of his mud-spattered tractor as he braced for a scuffle with activists trying to fly balloons carrying leaflets calling for a revolt against Kim Jong Un across the border to North Korea.

“I won’t let them provoke Kim Jong Un into firing shells at my town,” the 68-year-old South Korean farmer said Oct. 25 at the Imjingak tourist park, near the demilitarized zone that separates the nations. “I can’t afford to lose the peace I need in this busy harvest season.”

The tussles over the weekend pitched a handful of leafleting activists against border residents like Lee and hundreds of others who support a policy of engagement with North Korea. Dozens of police officers were deployed to keep them apart. One leaflet shows Saddam Hussein with a noose around his neck and the corpse of Muammar Qaddafi and urges North Koreans to “topple evil Kim Jong Un and shoot him to death!”

A series of shooting exchanges this month has escalated concerns among residents that North Korea may fire at civilian areas in South Korea should the flying of leaflets continue to be permitted.  [Bloomberg]

I guess we are supposed to feel bad for these farmers.  However, it isn’t until the end of the article that we find out who these people really are:

“These balloons will only come back to us in the form of bombs,” An So Hee, a United Progressive Party member of Paju City Council, said at Imjingak. “It’s the border residents who’ll have to bear the consequences of these leaflets.”

Long time ROK Heads may remember that the UPP is the South Korean political party filled with North Korean sympathizers and spies.  These North Korean sympathizers have done these protests before on behalf of their North Korean handlers by assaulting the balloon activists. This time they are trying to conduct an information operation by making their protesters appear to be concerned farmers to try to create public pressure to stop the balloon launches. The efforts by the North Korean stooges to stop the balloon launches only convinces me even further how effective these balloon launches are that the Kim regime would put this much effort into stopping them.

If the balloon launches were stopped by this aviation law than everyone who releases a balloon in Korea should be arrested as well:

The South Korean government has concluded that it can’t stop the scattering of anti-North Korea leaflets with the Aviation Act, an official said Thursday.

Those opposed to the spread of leaflets via balloons have argued that the legislation may provide a legal ground to tackle the civilian campaign, which they say hampers inter-Korean ties.

The law bans any unauthorized flight in the Demilitarized Zone and other controlled areas.

The transpiration ministry, which is in charge of the matter, concluded that the legislation can’t be applied to the activists’ actions, according to the unification ministry official

“The large-sized balloons used to scatter the leaflets don’t have any device for land-based control, meaning they are not considered ultra-small flight apparatuses,” the official told reporters on background.

He added there is no change in the government’s stance that it has no legal grounds to block the spread of the leaflets across the heavily armed border.

A group of conservative activists here revealed plans to send leaflets critical of the North’s leadership and system into the North from Imjingak, a park on the border, on Saturday.

The leaflet issue is a pretext for North Korea to avoid agreed-upon high-level talks with South Korea. [Yonhap]

This is just another example of how the engagement crowd wants to appease North Korean demands for the sake of talks where the North Koreans than make even more demands for little or nothing in return.  As long as the appeasement crowd continues to try and push the Park administration to give into North Koreans demands for little or nothing in return they will continue to make them.