SEOUL (SOUTH KOREA) – North Korea said it would push ahead with its campaign to send propaganda leaflets into South Korea, saying it was not bound to any inter-Korean pacts, state media said on Sunday.
Tension has been rising in the region in the wake of North Korea blowing up a building housing the joint liaison office and threatened military action over defectors in the South sending anti-North leaflets across the border.
According to state media, irate North Koreans are gearing up for their own “large-scale” leaflet campaign. Seoul’s Unification Ministry handling cross-border affairs on Saturday urged the plan to be scrapped citing a violation of peace agreements.
The United Front Department of the North’s ruling party, in charge of inter-Korean affairs, rebuffed the ministry’s calls as an “absurd nonsense.”
“Given their own wrongdoings, how dare they utter such words as regret and violation?” the department’s spokesman said in a statement carried by state media KCNA.
“When they are put in our shoes, the South Korean authorities will be able to understand even a bit how disgustedly we looked at them and how offending it was for us.”
Defector groups in the South have regularly sent back flyers, together with food, $1 bills, mini radios and USB sticks containing South Korean dramas and news, usually by balloon over the border or in bottles in rivers.
Pyongyang has also used balloons and drones to fly its anti-South leaflets, which in South Korea in the past have been rewarded with stationery if reported to police.
(Photos syndicated via Reuters)
This story has been edited by BH staff and is published from a syndicated field