Activists consider suspending leaflet operation pending Kim Jong

Military officers checks debris from trash-carrying North Korean balloons in Seongdong district, Seoul, June 2. Yonhap

A North Korean defectors' group said Monday it could consider temporarily halting the scattering of anti-Pyongyang leaflets across the border if the North's leader Kim Jong-un apologizes for the sending of trash-carrying balloons to South Korea.

Since Tuesday, North Korea has sent nearly 1,000 balloons carrying trash to the South in what it called a "tit-for-tat" action against Seoul activists' leaflet campaigns.

Park Sang-hak, head of the Fighters for a Free North Korea (FFNK), said there is basically no change in his stance that the group will resume the leaflet operations if winds blow in a northern direction.

"But we can consider temporarily stopping (the sending of the leaflets) if Kim Jong-un politely apologizes for letting South Koreans be hit with trash," he said.

The FFNK and other North Korean defectors' groups in South Korea have sent big plastic balloons carrying propaganda leaflets and USB sticks loaded with K-pop and drama content over the North in what they say is aimed at freeing North Korean people from the North Korean regime with outside information.

South Korea said Sunday it will not rule out the option to switch on loudspeaker broadcasting along the border as part of its "unendurable" responses to Pyongyang following the North's latest balloon operations and GPS jamming attacks.

Hours after Seoul's warning, North Korea said it will temporarily stop flying trash-carrying balloons to the South but also threatened resume sending them if the South scatters anti-Pyongyang leaflets.

If South Korea resumes the sending of such leaflets, North Korea will "correspond to it by intensively scattering wastepaper and rubbish a hundred times the amount of scattered leaflets and the number of cases, as we have already," North Korea's vice defense minister Kim Kang-il said.

In September, the Constitutional Court ruled that a clause banning leaflet launches in the act on the development of inter-Korean relations is unconstitutional, saying it excessively restricts the right to freedom of expression.

Seoul's unification ministry reaffirmed its stance that it will not urge civic groups to refrain from sending leaflets across the border.

"We are handling the situation by taking into account the court's ruling that says the leaflet launches are an issue of guaranteeing freedom of expression," Koo Byoung-sam, the ministry spokesperson, told a press briefing. (Yonhap)

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