North Korean propaganda leaflets apparently carried by balloons were found scattered on the streets of the South Korean capital, Seoul, yesterday, including some making personal attacks on the country’s president and first lady.
The leaflets attacking South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol and first lady Kim Keon-hee found in the capital appear to be the first instance of the North Korean government directly sending anti-South propaganda material across the border.
They included graphic messages accusing the Yoon government of failures that had left his people living in despair, and describing the first couple as immoral and mentally unstable.
Photo: REUTERS
The leaflets included photographs of the couple along with phrases such as: “It’s fortunate that President Yoon and his wife have no children” and “South Korea is the Kingdom of Keon-hee,” South Korea’s Chosun Daily reported.
The South Korean first lady faces allegations of participating in a stock manipulation scheme and meddling in the conservative ruling People Power Party’s candidate nominations in the lead-up to the general election in April.
The resumption of a campaign by Pyongyang to send balloons into its neighbor comes as tensions on the peninsula have spiked with the North accusing South Korea’s military of sending drones over Pyongyang to violate its sovereignty.
Photo: REUTERS
Activist groups in South Korea have long sent propaganda northwards, typically carried by balloons, including leaflets, US dollar bills and sometimes USB drives containing K-pop or K-dramas, which are banned in the tightly controlled North.
Since late May, North Korea has been sending thousands of balloons often carrying trash into various parts of South Korea saying it was to retaliate for propaganda leaflets sent the other way by South Korean activists criticizing the North’s leadership, with Pyongyang accusing Seoul of being complicit.
The South Korean Presidential Security Service said in a statement that trash dropped from North Korean balloons was found around the presidential office, but it posed no security or contamination risk.
A balloon from the North “exploded in the air, and the fallen debris was identified scattered around the Yongsan office area” early yesterday morning, it said, referring to the presidential compound.
It marks the second time the South Korean leader’s office in downtown Seoul, which is protected by scores of soldiers and a no-fly zone, has been directly hit by balloons launched from the North, with the first incident occurring in July.
The incident comes days after Kim Yo-jong, the powerful sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, once again accused South Korean activists of sending anti-Pyongyang materials into the North, and South Korea of sending unmanned drones to its capital, Pyongyang.
“Seoul will have to experience first hand so as to properly know the dangerous act it committed, and how terrible and fatal the consequences it brought on itself are,” she said.
The North Korean balloons have caused some property damage as they landed in the South including starting small fires from the trigger that releases the trash, but otherwise were retrieved by authorities without incident.
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