Tag: Fighters For A Free North Korea

This is a lesson from dictatorship 101, you have to control the flow of information to the people to maintain regime control; the balloon flights challenge this control:

Park Sang-hak, a North Korean defector-turned-activist and founder of the advocacy group Fighters for a Free North Korea, holds up propaganda material condemning North Korean leader Kim Jong-un for developing nuclear weapons and missiles without feeding the country’s hungry residents in this April 2021 photo. Courtesy of Fighters for a Free North Korea

Pyongyang has belatedly reacted furiously to South Korean Constitutional Court’s decision in September to strike down the ban on sending propaganda leaflets over the border into North Korea.

In a statement released in November, North Korea’s Central News Agency (KCNA) said the court’s decision signals a de facto war against the North as information warfare is part of an operation preceding a ground war.

Calling North Korean defectors who flew the leaflets across the border “garbage,” the KCNA said that North Korea’s firing of anti-aircraft rounds across the border in 2014 and its destroying of the inter-Korean liason office used for talks between the two countries in 2020 are two chilling reminders of what South Korea could face. 

In 2014, North Korea used anti-aircraft guns to shoot down balloons carrying anti-Pyongyang leaflets flown by South Korean activists near the border town of Yeoncheon. 

North Korea’s furious reaction to the court’s lifting of the ban on sending propaganda leaflets into the North reflects the regime fears its people being exposed to outside information.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

It looks like if a liberal administration takes over again they will have a harder time trying to shutdown Fighters for a Free North Korea with this court ruling:

A South Korean court on Tuesday found a law banning private entities from sending leaflets or other items by balloon into North Korea unconstitutional.

In a 7-2 decision, the Constitutional Court found the Development of Inter-Korean Relations Act, promulgated in 2020 during the liberal Moon Jae-in administration, unconstitutional. Scores of North Korean human rights groups filed the complaint with the Constitutional Court immediately after the law came into effect.

Korea Herald

You can read more at the link.

Park Sang-hak’s group Fighters for a Free North Korea are once again sending leaflets to North Korea:

A North Korean defectors’ group said Monday it has sent anti-Pyongyang leaflets and medicine by balloons to the North, as they marked the 73rd anniversary of the outbreak of the Korean War.

Park Sang-hak, head of the Fighters for a Free North Korea (FFNK), told Yonhap News Agency that the organization sent 20 balloons carrying some 200,000 leaflets, 10,000 face masks, Tylenol pills and booklets from Gimpo, west of Seoul, at 10 p.m. on Sunday.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but ROK Heads may remember that Park Sang-hak has been the victim of multiple assassination attempts by North Korean agents and assaulted by Korean leftists. He has also had leftists intrude at his house and has been repeatedly arrested and harassed by the Moon administration in effort to stop his group’s activities. 

The Yoon administration has decided to crackdown on Park Sang-hak and his Fighters for a Free North Korea:

 South Korean activists say they clashed with police while launching balloons carrying anti-Pyongyang propaganda materials across the North Korean border, ignoring their government’s plea to stop such activities since the North has threatened to respond with “deadly” retaliation.

Park Sang-hak, a North Korean defector-turned-activist, said he his group had launched about eight balloons from an area in the South Korean border town of Paju Saturday night when police officers arrived at the scene and prevented them from sending their 12 remaining balloons. Park said police confiscated some of their materials and detained him and three other members of his group over mild scuffles with officers before releasing them after questioning.

Officials at the Paju police and the northern Gyeonggi provincial police agencies didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment Sunday.

The balloons flown toward North Korea carried masks, Tylenol and Vitamin C tablets along with propaganda materials, including booklets praising South Korea’s economic wealth and democratic society and hundreds of USB sticks containing videos of U.S. Congress members denouncing the North’s human rights record, Park said.

Associated Press

You can read more at the link.

It will be interesting to see if Park Sang-hak and his team of activists will have to worry about being arrested for their activities by the new Korean government in power:

A North Korean defector group sent masks, Tylenol and vitamin C supplements across the border to the North via balloons on Sunday, citing concerns about North Koreans “suffering in the recent spread of the Covid-19 pandemic.”  
   
The flights will test the resolve of the new Yoon Suk-yeol administration, which inherited from the previous government a law outlawing such activities.  

“We sent 20,000 masks, 15,000 Tylenol pills, and 30,000 vitamin C tablets in 20 large balloons from Pocheon, Gyeonggi, on June 5,” said Park Sang-hak, head of Fighters for a Free North Korea, an organization of North Korean defectors that is critical of the North Korean regime, on Tuesday. 

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link, but ROK Heads may remember that Park Sang-hak has been the victim of multiple assassination attempts by North Korean agents and assaulted by Korean leftists. He has also had leftists intrude at his house and has been repeatedly arrested and harassed by the Moon administration in effort to stop his group’s activities. .

Park Sang-hak and the Fighters for a Free North Korea are planning on launching more leaflets to North Korea despite the Moon administration’s vows to stop them:

A North Korean defector group said Friday it plans to send thousands of leaflets to North Korea next week despite a recently enacted ban on such leafleting.

Park Sang-hak, a defector who heads Fighters for a Free North Korea, told Yonhap News Agency on Friday that his group plans to send leaflets across the border at an unannounced time and location from this Sunday to May 1.

“The leaflets will include a message criticizing their three-generation hereditary dictatorship and telling them to give out at least the minimum amount of food required for North Korean people,” he said.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but I guess we will see if the Moon administration decides to jail these activists or not. The new law they past can give people up to three years in jail for sending leaflets to North Korea. Park Sang-hak is probably hoping they try and do that to highlight how authoritarian the law is.

 ROK Heads may remember that Park Sang-hak has been the victim of multiple assassination attempts by North Korean agents and assaulted by Korean leftists. He has also had leftists intrude at his house and has been repeatedly arrested and harassed by the Moon administration in effort to stop his group’s activities. .

It was pretty clear that once the Moon administration came to power that the Korean left would find a way to put a true democracy activist like Park Sang-hak in jail:

Prosecutors have indicted the leader of an anti-North Korea leaflet campaign for alleged assault against journalists, officials said Thursday.

Park Sang-hak, 52, the head of Fighters for a Free North Korea, was charged on Nov. 25 with beating and throwing bricks at producers and crew from the broadcaster SBS on June 23. They visited his home in southern Seoul to interview him about the leafleting campaign but are said to have sustained injuries from his attack.

The North Korean defector is also accused of firing a tear gas gun at police officers who were dispatched to the scene following a report.

The Seoul Eastern District Prosecutors Office charged Park on four counts, including assault and obstruction of justice.

Regarding Park’s complaints against the SBS employees over housebreaking, the prosecutors did not charge one of them and suspended indictment for three others. 

Meanwhile, Park is currently under a separate prosecution investigation on charges of violating the Inter-Korean Exchange and Cooperation Act by sending propaganda leaflets into the North.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but Kim Yo-jong complained about the balloon launches to the Moon administration and shortly after the balloon launches were criminalized. Then the reporters break into house late at night for a so called interview. ROK Heads may remember that Park Sang-hak has been the victim of multiple assassination attempts by North Korean agents and assaulted by Korean leftists. What was he supposed to do get tea for the people that broke into his property late at night?

Here is the latest Moon administration attack on the human rights group that send leaflets into North Korea:

The government is seeking stronger measures against activist and North Korean defectors groups that have been sending anti-North Korea leaflets across the inter-Korean border, stating that their campaigns are not helping to create peace on the Korean Peninsula.

North Korea watchers say that the government’s tough stance could lead to the campaigns losing ground here. 

On Monday, the Ministry of Unification held a hearing to give two North Korean defectors’ groups a final opportunity to justify their actions before it makes a decision on whether to revoke their civic group licenses, following their sending of propaganda leaflets, rice and other items across the border. 

“We held a hearing today for Fighters for a Free North Korea and Kuensaem,” the ministry said in a press statement. “After checking whether there are any additional documents they need to submit, we will proceed with the license revocation and other related procedures.”

If their licenses are annulled, they will not be able to hold official fundraisers. Currently, donors for activist groups are eligible for various tax benefits.

“Individuals can donate, but their contribution could be seen as a donation of their property, which means they may have to pay gift taxes,” ministry spokesman Yoh Sang-key said. 

Korea Times

You can read more at the link, but this is the state of affairs in Korea right now. Leaders running human rights groups trying to make change in North Korea will have to pay taxes for donations while leaders of comfort women groups get to embezzle the money and then get appointed to the National Assembly to avoid prosecution.

It is interesting how the Moon administration is putting more pressure on a human rights activist to change his behavior than they ever have on the Kim regime to modify their behavior:

Police on Friday searched the house and office of a former North Korean defector who has been at the center of the anti-Pyongyang leafleting campaign in South Korea, denounced vehemently by North Korea. 

The national security probe team of the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency dispatched officials to search the home and office in Seoul of Park Sang-hak, who heads Fighters for a Free North Korea, an activist group that has been leading the campaign to send anti-North Korean propaganda leaflets across the border. 

The police officials combed through Park’s places in Songpa Ward, eastern Seoul, to secure potential evidence.

“The search is part of efforts to seize materials so that we could verify if Park’s activities are in breach of law,” a police officer said.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but the Moon administration is searching his house and making a media spectacle out of it to force him to have to move. ROK Heads may remember that Park Sang-Hak in the past has faced assassination attempts by North Korean agents and had leftist thugs assault him to stop his balloon protests.

With his address now disclosed he will have to move to avoid the leftist crazies that will be coming after him. I would have to think that Park and his group knew this day was coming as soon as Moon Jae-in was elected President and have some kind of contingency plan in place to lay low for a while.

This could be the last balloon launch for the Fighters for A Free North Korea for a while considering how the ROK government has put the clamps on their activities:

A South Korean activist group released balloons containing anti-Pyongyang propaganda leaflets across the border in the dead of night on Monday, in defiance of the South Korean government’s attempts to prevent such acts amid heightened tensions with North Korea.    
   
Park Sang-hak, head of the organization Fighters for a Free North Korea, said six members of his group launched 20 balloons containing half a million leaflets, 500 books advertising the success of South Korea’s capitalist system, 2,000 one dollar bills and 1,000 memory cards across the border towards the North from a secluded location in Paju, Gyeonggi, from 11 p.m. to midnight.    
   
One of those balloons was discovered stuck on trees on the banks of a stream in Hongcheon County, Gangwon, by police Tuesday afternoon.  
   
“In order to evade [South Korean] police surveillance, I trained members unaccustomed to dispatching leaflets to send the flyers,” Park announced, before delivering a tirade condemning the Moon Jae-in administration for attempting to silence defector groups from speaking out.   
   
The Ministry of Unification, South Korea’s top inter-Korean agency, on Tuesday expressed “deep regret” at the act, and announced it was taking “serious” measures to punish the group for violating the government’s ban on leaflet distributions.    
   
“The government once again stresses clearly that it will strongly respond to the dissemination of leaflets and items towards North Korea, which raise tensions between South and North and endanger the lives and safety of local residents,” the ministry stated in a press release.  
   
The ministry spokesman raised doubts, however, about Park’s claim that his group had released 500,000 leaflets Monday night, saying that based on investigations of the amount of leaflets the group prepared beforehand and the wind conditions that night, none of the released balloons appear to have entered North Korean territory.   
   
After police confiscated the group’s hydrogen gas supplies used to fuel balloon launches in the past, the group apparently obtained only enough helium to float a single balloon — likely the one found at Hongcheon, the ministry said. The balloon that was retrieved did not contain books, dollar bills or memory cards, it added.  

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link.