Search Results for: park sang-hak

Kim Yo-jong is not happy with a ROK Drop favorite Park Sang-hak because his group continues leaflet activities into North Korea:

Kim Yo-jong also issued a statement blaming Seoul for letting a North Korean defectors organization fly anti-Kim regime leaflets into the country last week. 

In the statement carried by the North’s Korea Central News Agency, she called it “an intolerable provocation” and said “the South Korean authorities again did not stop the reckless acts of the defectors from the North, winking at them.” Kim warned of “a corresponding action,” without elaborating.

On Friday, Fighters for a Free North Korea, a group of North Korean defectors, claimed that it had flown balloons carrying leaflets, booklets and U.S. dollars across the border. This came weeks after South Korea criminalized such an act despite criticism from some U.S. lawmakers and international rights groups that the law banning anti-Pyongyang leaflet campaigns limited South Korea’s freedom of speech.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

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. .

Political leaders in both the UK and United States are speaking out against the ban put on activist groups sending leaflets to North Korea:

The international community’s move against South Korea’s ban on sending anti-Kim Jong-un regime propaganda leaflets to North Korea is intensifying. Since the National Assembly, which is dominated by the ruling Democratic Party of Korea (DPK), passed a bill to implement the ban last December, criticism has continued to grow internationally that the law undermines freedom of speech, with members of the U.K. Parliament and the U.S. Congress raising the issue and planning to hold a debate and hearing session, respectively.

The DPK passed the law claiming it is needed to protect the lives of South Koreans living in the border region, although critics claim it is caving into North Korea’s demands in the hope of keeping bilateral relations alive. 

Korea Times

You can read more at the link, but according to the article Park Sang-hak the leader of Fighters for a Free North Korea that the Korean left has been trying to get jailed, is traveling to Washington, DC to speak at a Congressional hearing on this topic.

No surprise here that the ruling Democratic Party gave in to orders from Kim Yo-jong to criminalize the activists sending leaflets into North Korea:

The ruling Democratic Party of Korea’s (DPK) passage of a bill at the national Assembly prohibiting the sending of leaflets with anti-North Korea messages across the border is facing a strong backlash from defectors’ groups and the opposition as well as the international community.

Park Sang-hak, the head of the Fighters for a Free North Korea, a North Korean defectors’ group, said Tuesday that he will file a petition with the Constitutional Court against the so-called “anti-leaflet law,” which can hand down a prison term of three years or a maximum fine of 30 million won to people sending messages critical of the North Korean regime via leaflets or broadcasts.

The DPK pushed ahead with passing the bill despite a protest from the conservative opposition People Power Party late Monday evening. The bill came after a statement from North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s sister Kim Yo-jong in June in which she strongly denounced such leaflets and called on Seoul to do something about them. The opposition and activists for North Korean human rights such as Park have derided it as legislation “submitting to Kim Yo-jong’s order.”

Korea Times

You can read more at the link, but the article speculates that this might impact relations with the incoming Biden administration. I would be surprised if it does because when did anyone in the Obama administration ever strongly support these activists? I doubt the Biden administration will be much different.

By the way the North Korean reaction and the South Korean left’s quick criminalization of Park Sang-hak and his group is a sure sign that the leaflets are having an effect in North Korea.

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?

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.

ROK Heads may remember that Park Sang-hak who leads the defector group, Fighters for a Free North Korea has been subject to assassination attempts before by North Korea. The ROK media appears eager to help North Korea finish the job.

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.

It appears that the Moon administration wants to treat the balloon launch human rights activists like they do conservative journalists by threatening them with jail:

The unification ministry said Wednesday that it will file a complaint with police against two North Korean defector groups for sending anti-Pyongyang leaflets across the border, a day after the North cut off all inter-Korean communication lines over such leafleting. 

The ministry said that it will also take action to revoke business permits granted to the groups, Fighters for Free North Korea and Keunsaem, accusing them of putting the safety of people living in border regions at risk by sending leaflets into the North.

“They have violated public interests by heightening tensions between the South and the North and by running squarely against the agreements reached by the leaders of the two Koreas, and also caused danger to the lives and safety of residents in the border regions,” the ministry said in a press release.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but this is once again another example of how South Korea is a rule by law nation and not a rule of law nation. These activists have been doing this for years and one of their leaders Park Sang-Hak has faced assassination attempts by North Korean agents and had leftist thugs assault him to stop his balloon protests. Now with a change of government and complaints from North Korea, what they are doing is suddenly illegal.

One of my favorite defector groups, Fighters for A Free North Korea have been quiet during the Moon administration which is not friendly to defector groups. The Korean police have been sent to stop their balloon launch operations while at the same time the Moon administration allows protesters to blockade the THAAD site which is there to defend the country.

However, it appears that with the steep drop in President Moon’s popularity and the fact more people are realizing that the Kim regime will not denuclearize has given them an opportunity to restart their balloon operations:

The group, Fighters for a Free North Korea, flew 20 balloons carrying 500,000 leaflets from Yeoncheon, north of Seoul, at around 2 a.m., it said.
The balloons carried leaflets slamming the Kim Jong-un regime, as well as one-dollar bills and booklets. 
Park Sang-hak, the head of the organization, said earlier this month that it plans to send the leaflets because the North’s leader “did not keep his promise” to give up the country’s nuclear program.
The Seoul government has urged local activists to stop their leaflet campaigns, saying that they go against efforts to reduce tensions and improve ties with the North.

Yonhap

For those that don’t remember Park Sang-Hak is the leader of the group that has faced assassination attempts by North Korean agents and had leftist thugs assault him to stop his balloon protests.