Propaganda leaflets emerge as hot issue in inter-Korean relations

By Shim Sun-ah
SEOUL, Oct. 29 (Yonhap) -- While South Korea was reeling from malignant Internet
comments that caused the suicides of a number of TV entertainers, North Korea's
biggest headache was a more old fashioned form of propaganda: a torrent of
anti-Pyongyang leaflets coming from the South.
In South Korea, suffering from an information overload, propaganda leaflets from
North Korea exist only in the childhood memories of those aged 40 or more.
Citizens used to earn cartoon books, pencils and candy as rewards if they
reported North Korean leaflets to the police.
But leaflets remain influential in the reclusive communist country where the use
of the Internet, as well as radio and television are strictly controlled.
"I cannot forget the South Korean leaflet that I discovered for the first time in
a mountain where the Yodok detention center was located in 1985," Kang Chol-hwan,
a defector in Seoul, wrote in a recent newspaper column. "My hands and feet
trembled as if I were a big sinner as I saw the leaflet with photos of the South
Korean president and developed Seoul," he recalled.
Kang was then an inmate of the prison, notorious for its brutal, harsh and
inhumane treatment of political inmates.
As a journalist, he is now a key proponent of South Korean groups sending
anti-Pyongyang leaflets. The groups of civic activists and North Korea defectors
based in Seoul, persist in regularly sending balloons carrying tens of thousands
of leaflets despite their government's repeated plea to stop. They say it is
their duty to have North Koreans open their eyes to the truth.
North Korea has complained about the leaflets.
On Tuesday, the North escalated the tone of its threat over the leaflets, saying
its military will take "resolute practical action" unless Seoul stops the groups
from sending leaflets.
All official dialogue channels between the two Koreas were closed after South
Korea's President Lee Myung-bak took office in late February and pledged to get
tough with Pyongyang over its nuclear program and human rights record.
North Korea's killing of a South Korean housewife in the country's resort
mountain a few months ago added more tension to ties. South Korea immediately
suspended the 10-year-old tour program to Mount Geumgang.
Pyongyang, as a possible retaliatory measure, has warned of unspecified "grave
consequences to all inter-Korean cooperation programs in the Kaesong industrial
complex" and the tour to the same North Korean city of Kaesong as well as
ejection of more South Korean personnel from Kaesong and Mount Geumgang.
It has also threatened to cut all ties with South Korea if its conservative
government continues to pursue "a confrontational racket" while talking about
peace and reconciliatory dialogue with Pyongyang.
Analysts say North Korea's unprecedentedly sensitive reaction to the leaflets is
something to do with its leader Kim Jong-il's heath.
South Korean and U.S. intelligence said Kim, 66, had suffered a stroke in the
middle of August and is now recovering after undergoing brain surgery. But most
North Koreans are not informed about the news because Kim's health is a taboo
topic in the communist state.
The leaflets also carry details about Kim's wives and the royal family and how
defectors in South Korea live, as well as the historical fact that it was North
Korea that ignited the 1950-53 Korean War, not the South as taught in the
communist state, according to media reports here.
"North Korea may take the leaflets as a serious threat to the country if Kim is
in no situation to show his presence by appearing in public right now," said Kim
Seong-bae, a North Korea expert at Seoul's Institute for National Security
Strategy.
In Tuesday's interview with the North's official Korean Central News Agency, the
unnamed North Korean military spokesman claimed the South Korean government is,
in fact, encouraging the civic groups to spread anti-Pyongyang leaflets.
Seoul, however, is concerned about the leaflets' effect on already worsening
relations with Pyongyang, with no tangible legitimate means to stop the groups.
The groups must "refrain (from the activities) in consideration of a number of
inter-Korean agreements," Kim Ho-nyoun, spokesman for the Unification Ministry,
said Tuesday in a daily press briefing.
The two Koreas have ceased hostilities along their heavily armed border, a legacy
of the Cold War, since 2004, but the groups have been sending the leaflets for
years, hoping they might be helpful in expediting the collapse of the secretive
regime.
Seoul cannot legally punish the groups because the 2004 military agreement on
ending hostilities is limited to activities happening inside the demilitarized
zone, Kim said.
The feud over the leaflets came especially as Seoul makes efforts to resume
reconciliatory dialogue with Pyongyang amid progress in a six-party talks on
North Korea's nuclear disarmament.
Most Seoul officials and analysts say North Korea is unlikely to give up the
Kaesong industrial complex, known as a "dollar box" for the cash-strained
country, for the sake of defending its dignity and socialist system.
But some say the North may close down the complex because the "Great Leader" as
well as the communist system is everything for the country to defend.
More than 33,000 North Korean workers are currently earning dollars from 79 South
Korean factories in the Kaesong complex, located just north of the world's most
heavily armed border.