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| ▲ This photo, provided by the Fighters for a Free North Korea, a North Korean defectors' group, on June 21, 2024, shows its members sending balloons carrying anti-Pyongyang leaflets to North Korea in the South Korean border city of Paju the previous day. (PHOTO NOT FOR SALE) (Yonhap) |
(LEAD) Koreas-leaflet campaign
(LEAD) N. Korean leader's sister hints at launching more trash-carrying balloons
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SEOUL, June 21 (Yonhap) -- The influential sister of North Korea's leader Kim Jong-un hinted on Friday about launching more trash-carrying balloons into South Korea as she condemned "human scum" for sending what she described as "dirty wastepaper and things."
On Thursday night, a North Korean defectors' group sent 20 balloons carrying some 300,000 leaflets, U.S. dollars and USB sticks containing a hit K-drama and songs across the border in the border city of Paju -- the latest in a series of tit-for-tat leaflet campaigns between the two Koreas.
North Korean defector Park Sang-hak, who has been leading an anti-Pyongyang leaflet campaign, has vowed to continue sending propaganda leaflets to the North until North Korean leader Kim Jong-un apologizes for the North's sending of trash-carrying balloons to the South.
"It is natural that there would be something trouble to happen as they did again what they had been urged not to do," Kim Yo-jong said in a statement carried by the North's official Korean Central News Agency, an indication that the North will launch more trash-carrying balloons to South Korea.
North Korea sent more than 1,000 trash-carrying balloons toward the South in recent weeks in retaliation for South Korean activists' leaflet campaigns.
In retaliation, South Korea resumed loudspeaker broadcasts on June 9 for the first time in six years. But it did not turn on the loudspeakers the next day in an apparent bid to prevent the situation from spiraling out of control.
For years, North Korean defectors in the South and conservative activists have sent anti-Pyongyang leaflets to the North via balloons to help encourage North Koreans to eventually rise up against the Kim family regime.
North Korea has bristled at the propaganda campaign amid concern that an influx of outside information could pose a threat to the North Korean leader.
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