Tag: Park Sang-hak

It is interesting how the Moon administration is putting more pressure on a human rights activist to change his behavior than they ever have on the Kim regime to modify their behavior:

Police on Friday searched the house and office of a former North Korean defector who has been at the center of the anti-Pyongyang leafleting campaign in South Korea, denounced vehemently by North Korea. 

The national security probe team of the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency dispatched officials to search the home and office in Seoul of Park Sang-hak, who heads Fighters for a Free North Korea, an activist group that has been leading the campaign to send anti-North Korean propaganda leaflets across the border. 

The police officials combed through Park’s places in Songpa Ward, eastern Seoul, to secure potential evidence.

“The search is part of efforts to seize materials so that we could verify if Park’s activities are in breach of law,” a police officer said.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but the Moon administration is searching his house and making a media spectacle out of it to force him to have to move. ROK Heads may remember that Park Sang-Hak in the past has faced assassination attempts by North Korean agents and had leftist thugs assault him to stop his balloon protests.

With his address now disclosed he will have to move to avoid the leftist crazies that will be coming after him. I would have to think that Park and his group knew this day was coming as soon as Moon Jae-in was elected President and have some kind of contingency plan in place to lay low for a while.

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.

This could be the last balloon launch for the Fighters for A Free North Korea for a while considering how the ROK government has put the clamps on their activities:

A South Korean activist group released balloons containing anti-Pyongyang propaganda leaflets across the border in the dead of night on Monday, in defiance of the South Korean government’s attempts to prevent such acts amid heightened tensions with North Korea.    
   
Park Sang-hak, head of the organization Fighters for a Free North Korea, said six members of his group launched 20 balloons containing half a million leaflets, 500 books advertising the success of South Korea’s capitalist system, 2,000 one dollar bills and 1,000 memory cards across the border towards the North from a secluded location in Paju, Gyeonggi, from 11 p.m. to midnight.    
   
One of those balloons was discovered stuck on trees on the banks of a stream in Hongcheon County, Gangwon, by police Tuesday afternoon.  
   
“In order to evade [South Korean] police surveillance, I trained members unaccustomed to dispatching leaflets to send the flyers,” Park announced, before delivering a tirade condemning the Moon Jae-in administration for attempting to silence defector groups from speaking out.   
   
The Ministry of Unification, South Korea’s top inter-Korean agency, on Tuesday expressed “deep regret” at the act, and announced it was taking “serious” measures to punish the group for violating the government’s ban on leaflet distributions.    
   
“The government once again stresses clearly that it will strongly respond to the dissemination of leaflets and items towards North Korea, which raise tensions between South and North and endanger the lives and safety of local residents,” the ministry stated in a press release.  
   
The ministry spokesman raised doubts, however, about Park’s claim that his group had released 500,000 leaflets Monday night, saying that based on investigations of the amount of leaflets the group prepared beforehand and the wind conditions that night, none of the released balloons appear to have entered North Korean territory.   
   
After police confiscated the group’s hydrogen gas supplies used to fuel balloon launches in the past, the group apparently obtained only enough helium to float a single balloon — likely the one found at Hongcheon, the ministry said. The balloon that was retrieved did not contain books, dollar bills or memory cards, it added.  

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link.

One of my favorite defector groups, Fighters for A Free North Korea have been quiet during the Moon administration which is not friendly to defector groups. The Korean police have been sent to stop their balloon launch operations while at the same time the Moon administration allows protesters to blockade the THAAD site which is there to defend the country.

However, it appears that with the steep drop in President Moon’s popularity and the fact more people are realizing that the Kim regime will not denuclearize has given them an opportunity to restart their balloon operations:

The group, Fighters for a Free North Korea, flew 20 balloons carrying 500,000 leaflets from Yeoncheon, north of Seoul, at around 2 a.m., it said.
The balloons carried leaflets slamming the Kim Jong-un regime, as well as one-dollar bills and booklets. 
Park Sang-hak, the head of the organization, said earlier this month that it plans to send the leaflets because the North’s leader “did not keep his promise” to give up the country’s nuclear program.
The Seoul government has urged local activists to stop their leaflet campaigns, saying that they go against efforts to reduce tensions and improve ties with the North.

Yonhap

For those that don’t remember Park Sang-Hak is the leader of the group that has faced assassination attempts by North Korean agents and had leftist thugs assault him to stop his balloon protests.

I do find it interesting that the Moon administration is willing to send police to chase down these human rights activists, but they won’t send police to keep the road to the THAAD site in Seongju open:

A local civic group led by a North Korean defector attempted to send leaflets criticizing the Kim Jong-un regime across the border last weekend but was blocked by police, after both Koreas agreed at their latest summit not to disseminate propaganda material into each other’s country.

But Park Sang-hak, leader of Fighters for Free North Korea, claimed he already flew 150,000 leaflets into the North last Thursday from an undisclosed venue in Gimpo, Gyeonggi, accusing Pyongyang’s recent olive branch to Seoul of being a “disguised peace offensive.”

Park’s attempt to send more leaflets on Saturday noon from Paju, Gyeonggi, just south of the inter-Korean border, fell on the last day of the so-called North Korea Freedom Week, the last week of every April during which nongovernmental organizations promoting human rights in North Korea shed light on the regime’s atrocities.  [Joong Ang Ilbo]

For those that don’t know Mr. Park Sang-hak the leader of Fighters for a Free North Korea, he is the person that the South Korean leftists have sent thugs to assault and the Kim regime has sent assassins to kill.  Despite all of this Mr. Park continues to fearlessly launch balloons into North Korea.   I think it is only a matter of time before the leftist thugs are sent after Park again.

For Suzanne Scholte pictured above I don’t know what visa she is on, but the Moon administration could try and silence her by claiming she is violating her visa by conducting political activity.  It is pretty clear that for the next few years operations for these North Korean human rights organizations is going to be very difficult.

ROK Drop favorite Park Sang-hak and his group have continued with their propaganda balloon campaign against North Korea in the wake of the Kim regime’s repeated weapons tests:

An organization made up of North Korean escapees and a conservative civic group have distributed some 100-thousand leaflets denouncing the North’s nuclear and missile tests across the border.

Amid the heightened inter-Korean tension, Fighters for Free North Korea and the National Action Campaign for Freedom and Democracy in Korea distributed the leaflets on Monday in Paju, Gyeonggi Province near the border.

The organizations said that the people have the obligation to chastise Kim Jong-un’s threats and provocations regardless of whether or not the South’s government and military engage in psychological warfare.

The organizations then called on the public to join movements to send balloons containing leaflets to the North.

Last Saturday, Fighters for Free North Korea distributed 80-thousand leaflets condemning the North from Gimpo and Paju, as the day marked the sixth anniversary of the sinking of the South Korean naval corvette Cheonan torpedoed by Pyongyang.

Park Sang-hak, the head of the group, said that the organization will continue to send what will be a combined ten million leaflets critical of Pyongyang over the next three months.  [KBS World Radio]

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.

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.