Heeding a government suggestion, a key anti-North Korean civic group said Friday that it will scale back its campaign to send anti-Pyongyang propaganda leaflets across the border amid a burgeoning thaw in inter-Korean relations.
“We understand the government’s position and accept its request,” Lee Min-bok, head of the Campaign for Helping North Korean in Direct Way, a civic activist group, told Yonhap News Agency by phone. “We’re not going to excessively spread anti-North Korea leaflets for the time being.”
The Campaign is one of two major civic groups that have regularly flown large amounts of anti-Pyongyang leaflets by balloons across the border. The leaflet campaign targeting North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has been a constant source of friction between the two Koreas.
North Korea has openly threatened to retaliate against organizers of the leaflet campaigns who are mostly defectors from the North. But the Seoul government has refused to intervene, citing the constitutionally guaranteed freedom of expression.
But the Seoul government appears to be changing its position on the issue following a court ruling last month that government authorities can intervene and stop the leaflet campaign if it threatens the safety of people living in border areas.
The move by Lee’s group came one day after the Unification Ministry separately met heads of the two civic groups and requested them to refrain from flying the leaflets.
Lee, in response, said his group will honor the government’s suggestion but stressed that there will be no “drastic” cut in the frequency of the leaflet campaign, however.
Park Sang-hak, also a North Korean defector who heads the other activist group that leads the campaign, said he is considering suspending his plan to send DVDs of a Hollywood film about a fictional plot to kill the North Korean leader across the border by balloon, according to sources.
The head of the Fighters for a Free North Korea earlier had said he was planning to send 100,000 copies of Sony Pictures’ “The Interview,” which the North condemned as a deal-breaker, around Tuesday.
In a New Year Day address, the North Korean leader said he is willing to hold summit talks with South Korean President Park Geun-hye but said Seoul must first create a good atmosphere for dialogue by halting the leaflet campaign and joint military exercises with the United States.
South and North Korea are in a state of conflict after the 1950-53 Korean War ended in an uneasy armistice, not in a peace treaty. About 28,500 U.S. troops are stationed in South Korea as a deterrence against the North. (Yonhap)
