Activists to resume flying anti-Pyongyang leaflets despite escalating tension

By Kim Hyun
SEOUL, Feb. 2 (Yonhap) -- South Korean activists said Monday they will send North
Korean bills along with anti-Pyongyang propaganda leaflets into North Korea this
month, a move certain to provoke Pyongyang amid heightened inter-Korean tension.

Pyongyang warned on Friday that it was scrapping all peace accords with South
Korea and would no longer respect a volatile sea border in the Yellow Sea, a site
of two bloody skirmishes over the past decade.
The leaflet campaign, pursued by a group of North Korean defectors and families
of citizens allegedly abducted by North Korea, has been highly irritating to
Pyongyang, with messages openly disparaging North Korean leader Kim Jong-il and
anticipating the regime's fall.
The Seoul government has barred the activists from bringing in North Korean
currency for the purpose of resending it to the North. The group said, however,
they have already acquired the bills to be flown with the leaflets at around
leader Kim's 67th birthday on Feb. 16.
"We are sending this money to our family in North Korea," Choi Sung-young, head
of Family Assembly Abducted to North Korea, told reporters in a rally at the
Unification Ministry. "Even if this is illegal, we will send it."
The activists have been sending the propaganda leaflets via gas-filled balloons
from the border region since 2004, inspired by flyers sent by Seoul's
intelligence agency during the Cold War era. The plastic flyers refer to North
Korean leader Kim Jong-il as a prodigal womanizer who secretly enjoys expensive
wine and flashy cars.
The activists began attaching US$1 bills to the flyers in April last year to
entice North Korean citizens to pick them up. But rumors that North Korean
authorities were incarcerating those found with the $1 notes led them to switch
to North Korean currency, they said.
The Unification Ministry has warned that the activists will face punishment
should they go ahead with their plan.
Bringing in North Korean money is permitted only for trade purposes and after
prior government approval. Violations can result in up to three years in jail or
a 10 million won (US$7,168) fine.
The latest leaflet campaign comes amid heightened tension along the border.
In the toughest warning yet since President Lee Myung-bak's inauguration a year
ago, North Korea said on Friday "there is no need" to honor inter-Korean peace
accords and added that the western sea border will be "nullified."
Seoul reacted calmly, holding a nationally televised roundtable discussion hours
later during which President Lee said such threats were "not new." The president
added, "We are waiting for North Korea to understand" Seoul's compassion and
willingness to help it, he said.
On Sunday, North Korea further stepped up its rhetoric against the South,
suggesting that downplaying Pyongyang's recent warnings could "lead to military
conflict and war that is unpreventable and inevitable."
Scott Snyder, a Korea analyst at the Asia Foundation, an independent think tank
in Washington, said the latest North Korean warnings are serious.
"South Korea has responded prudently to North Korean statements thus far and
should take North Korean threats seriously as a possible signal of rising
tensions," he said in an e-mail to Yonhap. "Crisis escalation is a familiar
tactic that North Korea has used in the past to pursue its diplomatic
objectives," he said.
Analysts say the North's bellicose statements are aimed at changing Seoul's
hardline policy and drawing the attention of the new U.S. administration to
induce economic aid in nuclear negotiations.
hkim@yna.co.kr
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