A group of North Korean defectors said yesterday that they had flown a fresh batch of anti-Pyongyang propaganda leaflets over the border, a move considered highly provocative by the communist state.
Lee Min-bok, who leads a group of North Korean Christians, said they sent 1.5 million leaflets into the North on Friday from Baekryeong island near the inter-Korean border in the Yellow Sea.
“We sent a total of 1.5 million leaflets carried by 26 helium balloons into the North on Friday,” Lee of the North Korea Christian Association told journalists.
Plastic bags, which contained daily necessities such as socks, stockings, toothpaste, toothbrushes, aspirin, ball-point pens and cigarette lighters, were also floated on sea currents flowing north, he said.
“We had favorable weather conditions this month,” Lee said, adding the group had scattered millions of such leaflets this month by taking advantage of winds blowing north.
“We’re sending these leaflets for the purpose of evangelizing North Koreans and rescuing them,” he said.
Activists, mostly North Korean defectors, have been sending leaflets across the border for years without creating much of a stir.
But the fliers became a major cause of tension against the backdrop of worsening inter-Korean ties, especially after they touched on the reported health problems of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il.
North Korea’s Committee for Peaceful Unification of the Fatherland (CPUF) on Friday issued a fresh warning against what it said was the South’s policy of confrontation.
“We’ll never tolerate the anti-Republic [North Korea] moves by the current South Korean regime and we will certainly settle the score with them,” a spokesman for the CPUF was quoted as saying by Pyongyang’s official Korean Central News Agency.
Inter-Korean ties have been deteriorating towards those seen during the Cold War since the inauguration of the conservative government of South Korean President Lee Myung-bak in February.
Lee rolled back his liberal predecessor’s policy of engagement by linking economic aid to the North with progress in denuclearization, openness and reform, terms highly unlikely to be accepted by the hardline communist state.
This month, the North expelled hundreds of South Korean workers from the Kaesong joint industrial estate and imposed strict border controls, in protest at what it called the South’s policy of confrontation.
Meanwhile, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said in an interview released on Friday that only an “idiot” would trust North Korea, which is why the US is insisting on a way to check its nuclear claims.
A 2005 multilateral deal under which Pyongyang would abandon its nuclear programs has become snagged on Pyongyang’s refusal to spell out a protocol on how to verify its disclosures about its nuclear programs.
The sticking point appears to be North Korea’s reluctance to allow inspectors to take samples to test a declaration of its atomic program that it submitted this year as part of the aid-for-disarmament agreement.
US President George W. Bush had hoped an agreement on verification with North Korea, which conducted a nuclear test in October 2006, would have opened the way to dismantling Pyongyang’s nuclear arms capacity.
Speaking to a group of foreign policy experts and students on Wednesday, Rice rejected criticism from US conservatives who believe the Bush administration has been too trusting of Pyongyang in recent years.
“Nobody was trusting of the North Koreans. I mean, who trusts the North Koreans? You’d have to be an idiot to trust the North Koreans,” she said in the appearance at the Council of Foreign Relations think tank, prompting laughter.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS