South Korea on Monday banned the launching of propaganda leaflets into North Korea, drawing the criticism of human rights advocates and defiance from a prominent North Korean defector, who said he would not stop sending messages to his homeland.
Defectors and other campaigners in South Korea have for decades sent leaflets critical of the North Korean regime over the tightly guarded border, usually by balloon or in bottles on border rivers.
They also send food, medicine, money, mini radios, and USB sticks containing South Korean news and TV dramas.
Photo: AFP
Isolated North Korea has long denounced the practice and has stepped up its condemnation of it, to the alarm of a South Korean government intent on improving ties on the divided Korean Peninsula.
The South Korean parliament on Monday voted to amend the Development of Inter-Korean Relations Act to bar any scattering of printed materials, goods, money and other items of value across the border.
It also restricts loudspeaker propaganda broadcasts, which the South Korean military once championed as part of its psychological warfare against the North until it withdrew the equipment following a 2018 summit.
The ban is to take effect in three months and those breaking the law face up to three years in prison or a fine of up to 30 million won (US$27,420).
The bill was introduced in June after Kim Yo-jong, the sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, said the South should ban the leaflets or face the “worst phase” of relations.
“They’re trying to put Kim Yo-jong’s order into law at her single word,” Tae Yong-ho, an opposition lawmaker and former North Korean diplomat, said in a 10-hour filibuster speech, adding that the bill would only help Pyongyang to continue “enslaving” its people.
Park Sang-hak, a defector from North Korea who has already been stripped of a license for his leaflet-launching group and faces a judicial investigation, said that he would not give up his 15-year campaign.
“I’ll keep sending leaflets to tell the truth because North Koreans have the right to know,” Park said. “I’m not afraid of being jailed.”
Park and another 20 South Korean civic groups have vowed to challenge the law’s constitutionality, while Human Rights Watch called the ban a “misguided strategy” by Seoul.
US Representative Chris Smith, who cochairs a bipartisan human rights commission, in a statement criticized the amendment as “ill-conceived, frightening” for facilitating the imprisonment of people for simply sharing information.
When asked about Smith’s statement, the South Korean Ministry of Unification said that the bill was a “minimal effort to protect the lives and safety of residents in border regions.”
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