Residents of border areas protest against anti-Pyongyang leaflet scattering
2014/10/15 16:54
SEOUL, Oct. 15 (Yonhap) -- A group of South Koreans residing near the inter-Korean border urged the government Wednesday to prevent anti-North Korea activists from sending propaganda leaflets.
Staging a rally in front of the unification ministry building in Seoul, they accused the ministry of sitting idle while the cross-border spread of leaflets is putting residents of border areas in great danger.
"It is being conducted in the opposite direction of local residents' opinions. It is seriously threatening our basic right to live," Lee Je-ok, pastor at a Gimpo church located just south of the Demilitarized Zone, said at the rally. He was joined by representatives from other border regions, including Yeoncheon, Paju, and Chorwon, as well as more than 20 progressive activists.
Lee added the government should look into the financial resources of those groups scattering leaflets.
Security concerns have sharply grown among residents of border regions since the North's military fired machine-gun rounds at leaflet-carrying balloons last week. Some of the rounds landed in those border regions.
South Korea's progressive and conservative groups hold separate rallies in front of the unification ministry in Seoul on the spread of anti-North Korea leaflets on Oct. 15. (Yonhap)
A coalition of conservative groups held a separate rally in front of the ministry at the same time, voicing support for the leaflet campaign.
They revealed plans to send roughly 100,000 leaflets across the border from a peace park in a border region on Oct. 25.
"It is an effective way to let North Korean people know the reality they face," Lee Gyong-ja, head of a conservative mothers' group said. "The unification ministry should provide support for the spread of leaflets."
The ministry has maintained that it has no legal ground to block civilians from sending leaflets into the North, a matter associated with freedom of speech.
North Korea has been a source of ideological rifts in South Korea, with the two sides still technically at war. Their 1950-53 conflict ended in an armistice, not a formal peace treaty.
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