North Korea has millions of propaganda leaflets ready to send to the South by an aerial armada of balloons, it said Monday, heightening its rhetoric against Seoul after blowing up a liaison office. North Korea’s plan to send in retaliatory leaflets into the South was first unveiled during the previous week, with the latest announcement confirming that the North has prepared the leaflets and is awaiting signal to launch them into the South.
North Korea has vowed to revive a favorite weapon of Cold War-era psychological warfare: threatening to send millions of propaganda leaflets, cigarette butts and other trash to South Korea https://t.co/M9Apd5Lx8u
— The New York Times (@nytimes) June 22, 2020
In recent weeks Pyongyang has issued a series of vitriolic condemnations of Seoul over anti-North leaflets, which defectors based in the South send across the border — usually attached to balloons or floated in bottles.
North Korea ready to send leaflets in retaliation to South
The North says it will have nothing more to do with Seoul, and last week blew up a liaison office on its side of the border that symbolised inter-Korean rapprochement, while threatening to bolster its military presence in and near the Demilitarized Zone.
Analysts say Pyongyang has been conducting a series of staged provocations aimed at forcing concessions from Seoul and Washington with nuclear talks at a standstill.
Ostensibly the source of its anger is the leaflets which it says insult the dignity of its leadership — a reference to leader Kim Jong Un.
Read more: North Korea preparing anti-South leaflets in new campaign
It is preparing to retaliate with its “largest-ever distribution of leaflets against the enemy”, the official Korean Central News Agency reported Monday.
Altogether “12 million leaflets of all kinds reflective of the wrath and hatred of the people from all walks of life” have been produced, it said, and more than 3,000 balloons prepared to send them far to the south.
“The time for retaliatory punishment is drawing near,” it said.
North Korea targeting Moon Jae-In in latest onslaught
One of the leaflets shown in the official Rodong Sinmun newspaper carried an image of South Korean President Moon Jae-in drinking from a cup and accused him of having “eaten it all, including the north-south Korea agreement”.
Both Koreas used to regularly send leaflets to the other side, but agreed to stop such propaganda activities — including loudspeaker broadcasts along the frontier — in the Panmunjom Declaration that Moon and Kim signed at their first summit in 2018.
Read more: Korean liaison office destroyed by North Korea amid rising tensions with South
In a commentary this month, KCNA described leaflet-scattering as “undisguised psychological warfare” and “an act of a preemptive attack that precedes a war”.
At times it has led to escalation — in October 2014 the North opened fire on an air balloon carrying anti-Pyongyang leaflets, triggering an exchange of shots at the border.
But most South Koreans largely ignore leaflets they find sent by the North.
As animosities on the Korean Peninsula have risen sharply, South Korea is urging North Korea to scrap a plan to float 12 million leaflets across the border in what would be the largest such psychological campaign. https://t.co/4dic6q7kiu
— The Associated Press (@AP) June 22, 2020
The flyers often boast of its military prowess or criticise the US and Southern presidents, accompanied by offensive images and language. A 2016 flyer showed then South Korean President Park Geun-hye, with one eye photoshopped to look bruised and her hair messed up, with the message: “Idiot president and devil.”
North Korea retaliatory leaflets amid longstanding tensions
Inter-Korean relations have been in a deep freeze following the collapse of a summit in Hanoi between Kim and US President Donald Trump early last year over what the nuclear-armed North would be willing to give up in exchange for a loosening of sanctions.
The impoverished country is subject to multiple United Nations Security Council sanctions over its banned weapons programmes.
Moon initially brokered a dialogue between Pyongyang and Washington, but the North now blames him for not persuading the United States to relax sanctions.
Analysts say its actions appear to be carefully calibrated, with Pyongyang drawing out the process by issuing multiple incremental warnings from different official sources — leadership, government departments and the military — ahead of each step it takes.
Read more: Korea military deal in danger as North Korea threatens withdrawal
The North’s latest declarations come after Kim Yeon-chul, South Korea’s point man for relations with Pyongyang, resigned as unification minister over the heightened tensions, expressing hope that his departure “will be a chance to pause for a bit”.
South Korea has also announced it will ban sending leaflets north — raising concerns over freedom of speech in the democratic country — and has filed a police complaint against two defector groups over the campaigns that have offended Pyongyang.
The two Koreas remain technically at war after the Korean War hostilities ended with an armistice in 1953 that was never replaced by a peace treaty.
AFP with additional input by GVS News Desk.
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