A file picture shows leaflets-carrying propaganda balloons in a border area. [Yonhap News Photo]
In an operation near the heavily guarded inter-Korean border, South Korean activists launched propaganda balloons carrying leaflets that condemned the death of an American college student who died after returning home in a coma following 17 months of captivity in North Korea.
Ten balloons attached with bundles of some 300,000 leaflets were sent into North Korea from a riverside mountain northwest of Seoul in a pre-dawn exercise led by Park Sang-hak, a defector-turned activist who has been on North Korea's hit list.
Park said his group was sending leaflets to let North Korean citizens know about the brutal death of Otto Warmbier, a 22-year-old University of Virginia student, who was detained in the North for more than a year for stealing a political propaganda poster from a hotel in Pyongyang.
The balloons were written with slogans such as "Kim Jong-un murdered Warmbier!" and "We mourn Warmbier's death!". One balloon carried a large painting that showed the images of Kim and Warmbier side-by-side and a slogan reading "The entire world condemns Kim Jong-un who brutally tortured Otto Warmbier, a 23-year-old patriotic young man."
Despite frequent death threats, Park has spearheaded a dangerous campaign to send anti-Pyongyang leaflets across the border. Pyongyang has threatened to attack the sites for balloon launches. In October 2014, North Korean troops opened fire in an attempt to shoot down a set of balloons, sparking a brief exchange of fire across the border.
For decades, the two Koreas, which are still technically at war with no peace treaty signed, have been locked in an outdated propaganda war across the world's last Cold War frontier. Last month South Korean soldiers fired a volley of warning shots when North Koran propaganda balloons flew into the southern side of the demilitarized zone which split the Korean peninsula following the 1950-53 Korean conflict.
Pyongyang has bombarded South Korean border areas with its own propaganda leaflets. Most South Koreans don't take North Korean leaflets seriously, but they are concerned about leaflet bundles which have caused minor damage to civilian quarters. North Korea has used time bombs to control the explosion of balloons.
Lim Chang-won = cwlim34@ajunews.com
reporter
Park Sae-jin
swatchsjp@ajunews.com
