South Korean and Japanese activists flew hundreds of thousands of leaflets toward the border with North Korea yesterday to condemn the country’s government amid tensions over the deadly sinking of a South Korean warship.
South Koreans critical of North Korea and some North Korean defectors living in the South regularly float leaflets across the heavily armed frontier via balloon in a campaign to urge North Koreans to rise up against leader Kim Jong-il’s totalitarian regime.
The leaflets sent yesterday, also by balloon, criticized North Korea’s late founding father Kim Il-sung for starting the Korean War and blamed the current regime led by his son Kim Jong-il for a botched currency reform and the downing of the ship — which killed 46 sailors.
The sending of the leaflets comes amid North Korea’s threats to launch an all-out strike against any South Korean government propaganda facilities at the border such as loudspeakers.
The groups originally planned to send 100 balloons carrying a total of 6 million leaflets, but less-than-ideal wind conditions at the launch site near the border reduced the total to nine balloons and 540,000 leaflets, organizers said. It was unclear whether the balloons would actually reach the North. They plan to send the rest later this week.
“We’d like to punish the Kim Jong-il government by spreading the truth written on these leaflets,” said Seo Jung-gab, president of the National Action Campaign, one of the participating groups.
Also among groups participating was the National Association for the Rescue of Japanese Kidnapped by North Korea, a group supporting the families of Japanese abducted by Pyongyang’s agents in the 1970s and 1980s.
The leaflets contained a message to the abductees and contact information for organizations in Japan and China working to assist them.
“North Korean citizens don’t even know that their government kidnapped people worldwide,” said the group’s chairman, Tsutomu Nishioka.
North Korea has admitted to kidnapping 13 Japanese citizens and has allowed five to return home, saying the other eight died. Tokyo has demanded proof of the deaths and a probe into other suspected kidnapping cases. Besides the five who returned to Japan, the government has identified 12 other citizens it says were abducted.
The two Koreas ended decades of propaganda campaigns against each other in 2004 as relations improved following a 2000 summit. However, Seoul resumed propaganda radio broadcasts as part of steps to punish the North for allegedly sinking the warship with a torpedo in March.
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