Tag: balloons

The leftists in the South Korean government are trying to legislate away a subsidy the North Korean defector groups receive to help their balloon launch campaign:

Government subsidies for anti-North Korea activists have emerged as a bone of contention at the National Assembly as rival parties are competing to get their respective human rights bills related to North Korea passed.

The subsidies allegedly have been used to fund the campaign of releasing balloons containing leaflets criticizing the Pyongyang leadership that are blown across the border.

The ruling Saenuri Party said Monday it favored keeping the subsidies for civic groups as a tool against North Korea, while the main opposition New Politics Alliance for Democracy (NPAD) argued that it will only anger the North.

The two parties failed to reach a compromise so the competing bills are now being deliberated at the National Assembly Foreign Affairs and Unification Committee.  [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link, but ending the subsidies will not end the balloon launches.  The defector groups will just have to raise more money privately to fund the launches.

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.

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.

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.

Here is another example of tit-for-tat occurring on the DMZ:

The two Koreas exchanged machine gun fire Friday, Seoul’s military said, after the North launched shots toward balloons carrying anti-Pyongyang propaganda leaflets floated by South Korean civic activists across the tense border.

South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said some of the North Korean shots landed south of the border, prompting the South’s military to fire back in response.

No further details were available, including whether there were any casualties on either side.

Seoul’s military officials corrected earlier reports that artillery had been used in the clash, saying that it’s wrong.

They said shots could be heard from north of the border at around 3:55 p.m., about two hours after a group of South Korean activists flew 200,000 anti-North Korean leaflets in balloons in a border village of Paju.

The officials added that shots apparently fired by anti-aircraft machine guns were discovered south of the border around 4:50 p.m. There were no reports of South Korean casualties, they said.

South Korea’s military fired back about 40 rounds from its K-6 machine gun 10 minutes after issuing an warning message at 5:30 p.m. [Yonhap]

This may have been another example of a DMZ tit-for-tat, but the threat to these balloons activists from the North Korean regime is very real.  Park Sang-hak the North Korean defector who is the leader of this activist group is the one in the most danger.  Park is the man who the Kim regime has repeatedly threatened, sent their South Korean leftist lackeys to assault him, and even tried to assassinate him a few years ago due to his balloon launch efforts.  Despite all this Park continues to send his balloons into North Korea which must be having an effect considering the reaction of the Kim regime to these launches.

Besides the usual bombastic statements about turning Seoul into a “Sea of Flames” in response to the upcoming Foal Eagle/Key Resolve exercise, here is what I continue to find satisfaction in the fact that this continues to really anger the Kim regime:

Earlier Sunday, the North’s military warned that it would destroy South Korean border towns if Seoul continues to allow activists to launch propaganda leaflets toward the communist country.

In a separate statement carried by KCNA, it accused South Korean activists and lawmakers of flying balloons carrying hundreds of thousands of leaflets and DVDs critical of North Korea’s government on the North’s most important national holiday, an apparent reference to leader Kim Jong Il’s 69th birthday, which was Feb. 16.  [Associated Press]

The continual angry responses from the North Korean regime against the balloon launches continues to be a sign that this continues to be an effective way to counter the regime propaganda apparatus within North Korea.  I would hope though that the South Korean military is taking these threats seriously because I would not be surprised if the North Koreans try something in the coming weeks in response to the balloon launches like they are threatening.