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Groups scuffle with protesters as they send leaflets into N. Korea
By Shim Sun-ah
SEOUL, Dec. 2 (Yonhap) -- South Korean groups sent propaganda leaflets critical of North Korea over the strictly controlled Demilitarized Zone on Tuesday as they scuffled with liberal activists who desperately tried to stop the launch.
The groups sent off a large balloon carrying 10,000 leaflets at a spot near the west coast, a day after North Korea tightened border traffic with South Korea in an initial retaliatory step against Seoul's hardline policy toward Pyongyang.
The groups had prepared ten balloons to carry 100,000 leaflets but managed to send just one after clashing with dozens of liberal activists looking to prevent further damage to inter-Korean relations. The opposing members stole the remaining leaflets from a truck parked nearby.
One activist was hospitalized and another was taken into police custody, according to police officials.
Rarely seen since the Cold War, leaflets have recently emerged as a divisive issue between the two Koreas. Relations between Pyongyang and Seoul have worsened since the launch of conservative South Korean President Lee Myung-bak in February.
Lee has shown reluctance to carry out agreements signed by his two liberal predecessors and North Korean leader Kim Jong-il. The most recent summit agreement, signed in 2007, includes a slew of cross-border economic projects that would require massive South Korean investment in the impoverished communist state.
North Korea has repeatedly threatened to cut all ties with Seoul if it fails to stop the conservative activists from sending the leaflets. Seoul also asked them to stop in order not to further enrage the North.
Pyongyang has mobilized soldiers en mass in a campaign to collect leaflets that have fallen on western coastal towns near the border, Washington-based Radio Free Asia reported earlier in the day, citing Chinese sources well-informed on North Korea.
Experts say the leaflets have struck a nerve because they often contain information on the 66-year-old Kim's reported health problems, of which most North Koreans are likely unaware.
South Korean and U.S. intelligence officials have said the North Korean leader suffered a stroke in the middle of August. North Korea has vehemently denied the reports.
Many of the leaflets have repeatedly criticized Kim for enjoying a lavish life while his people suffering from chronic food shortages, and urge North Koreans to rise up against the "killer whose death is approaching."
The leaflets sometimes are mixed with U.S. dollar bills or Chinese yuan notes to entice North Koreans to pick them up. In the impoverished nation, one can live a month on one dollar, according to Park Sang-hak, a North Korea defector whose group has been sending the leaflets for about four years.
The two Koreas agreed in 2004 to halt propaganda warfare, which had involved floating leaflets and blasting loud speakers across the heavily armed border.
South Korean activists, mostly defectors from North Korea and families of South Korean fishermen abducted by the North, however, have kept sending the leaflets.
"We also don't want an end to inter-Korean relations but just want to confirm whether our families kidnapped by the North are alive or not," Choi Song-ryong, head of an association of families of those kidnapped by North Korea. "We will not stop scattering anti-Pyongyang leaflets until the issue of kidnapped South Koreans is settled," he stressed.
Seoul estimates a total of 494 South Korean citizens, mostly fishermen, have been abducted and held against their will since the 1950-53 Korean War, and that there are about 540 South Korean prisoners of war still alive in the North. Pyongyang denies holding any South Korean nationals against their will.
sshim@yna.co.kr
(END)
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