South Korea yesterday said that it planned to push new laws to ban activists from flying anti-Pyongyang leaflets over the border after North Korea threatened to end an inter-Korean military agreement reached in 2018 to reduce tensions if Seoul fails to prevent the protests.
The South’s desperate attempt to keep alive a faltering diplomacy will almost certainly trigger debates over freedom of speech in one of Asia’s most vibrant democracies.
Sending balloons across the border has been a common activist tactic for years, but North Korea considers it an attack on its government.
Photo: EPA-EFE
Defectors and other activists in the past few weeks have used balloons to fly leaflets criticizing authoritarian North Korean leader Kim Jong-un over his nuclear ambitions and dismal human rights record.
While Seoul has sometimes sent police to block such activities during times of high tension, it had resisted the North’s calls to fully ban them, saying that the activists were exercising their freedoms.
The shift followed remarks earlier in the morning from Kim’s sister Kim Yo-jong, who threatened to end the military agreement and said that the North could permanently shut a liaison office and an inter-Korean factory park that have been major symbols of reconciliation.
In her statement released through state media, Kim Yo-jong called the defectors involved in the balloon launches “human scum” and “mongrel dogs” who betrayed their homeland, and said that it was “time to bring their owners to account,” referring to the government in Seoul.
South Korean Ministry of Unification spokesman Yoh Sang-key said that the balloon campaigns were threatening the safety of residents living in the border area and that his government would push for legal changes to “fundamentally resolve tension-creating activities.”
Asked whether the ministry would specifically express regret over the North’s threat to abandon inter-Korean agreements, Yoh said: “We will substitute our evaluation [of the North Korean] statement with the announcement of the government position [on the issue].”
South Korea’s ruling liberal party and its satellite party have 180 seats in the 300-seat South Korean National Assembly after triumphing in elections in April, giving it a solid majority to win approval for the proposal in the legislature.
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