Residents call for stop to leaflet campaign Residents hold a news conference in Paju, 30 kilometers north of Seoul, on June 22, 2020, calling on North Korean defectors’ groups to cancel plans to fly anti-Pyongyang leaflets over the border. (Yonhap)
I remember the good old days of North Korean propaganda music on the DMZ and U.S. troops station at the JSA may get to experience it again:
This file photo taken on June 16, 2004, shows South Korean soldiers dismantling propaganda loudspeakers targeting North Korean soldiers at a border unit. The defense ministry said on April 30, 2018, that it would withdraw such loudspeakers from May 1 in accordance with agreements made at the recent inter-Korean summit. (Yonhap)
North Korea is reinstalling propaganda loudspeakers in regions along the inter-Korean border after removing them under a 2018 summit agreement with South Korea, military officials said Monday.
After the summit between President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un on April 27, 2018, the two Koreas agreed to halt all hostile acts against each other and eliminate their means, including broadcasting through loudspeakers and distribution of leaflets.
According to the authorities, North Korea has been detected setting up loudspeakers again “in multiple places” inside the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) from around Sunday. It had dismantled dozens of loudspeakers in around 40 areas near the tense border in a first action to follow up on the Panmunjom Declaration.
The difference between the propaganda leaflets war now going on is that in South Korea people would just laugh at North Korean propaganda while in North Korea, the activists that launch their propaganda balloons is a threat to state stability:
This photo, captured from the website of North Korea’s Korean Central News Agency on June 20, 2020, shows printed pictures of South Korean President Moon Jae-in with cigarette butts in a plastic bag, after the North has said it will send anti-Seoul propaganda leaflets from the North into the South. (For Use Only in the Republic of Korea. No Redistribution) (Yonhap)
The North’s Korean Central News Agency website showed pictures of North Korean workers sorting printed propaganda flyers in piles. One of them showed pictures of President Moon Jae-in with dirty cigarette butts in a plastic bag.
“It is very regrettable that North Korea unveiled via a media outlet its plan to send massive anti-South Korea leaflets, and we demand its immediate halt,” the ministry said in a statement.
“Such acts by North Korea are a clear violation of the inter-Korean agreement, a step that does not resolve wrong practices between the two Koreas but rather exacerbates them,” it said, stressing that it does no good for inter-Korean relations or the peace process on the Korean Peninsula.
It also said the government has vowed to sternly deal with anti-Pyongyang leafleting by some civic groups and stepped up control near the border towns to crack down on the activities.
City of Changchun rolls out propaganda subway train dedicated to the political doctrine of Xi Jinping. The municipal government described the train as a “highly condensed spiritual manual” of “Xi Jinping Thought.” https://t.co/Jc9Nwoap4Vpic.twitter.com/z6LAaFP2N2
N.K. posters on leader’s New Year speechThis photo from the North’s Korean Central News Agency on Jan. 24, 2019, shows one of the new propaganda posters highlighting messages from the New Year’s Day speech by the country’s leader Kim Jong-un. This poster reads, “Let the young people become pioneers of new technology, creators of new culture and pathfinders for a great leap forward!” (Yonhap)
So I am to believe that the Kim regime is so poor that they need the international community to provide them humanitarian assistance, but some how they have enough funds to support this?:
The 105-story Ryugyong Hotel has long been a blot on the Pyongyang skyline. The world’s tallest unoccupied building has towered over North Korea’s capital since 1987, a grand but empty pyramid entirely dark except for the lone aircraft warning light at its top. Outsiders saw the unfinished building as the epitome of failure, while people inside the country took care to rarely mention it at all. That is, until light designer Kim Yong Il made the building once again the talk of the town. In a brilliant flip of the script, the Ryugyong has been reborn as a symbol of pride and North Korean ingenuity. For several hours each night, the building that doesn’t have electricity inside becomes the backdrop of a massive light show in which more than 100,000 LEDs flash images of famous statues and monuments, bursts of fireworks, party symbols and political slogans.
Shown is a poster released by North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) on May 16, 2018, to encourage North Korea’s economic development. (Yonhap)
I do find it interesting that the Moon administration is willing to send police to chase down these human rights activists, but they won’t send police to keep the road to the THAAD site in Seongju open:
Suzanne Scholte, chair of North Korea Freedom Coalition, speaks at an impromptu press conference on Saturday in Paju, Gyeonggi, after an attempt to send leaflets criticizing the Kim Jong-un regime across the border by a local civic group was blocked by police. [OH JONG-TAEK]A local civic group led by a North Korean defector attempted to send leaflets criticizing the Kim Jong-un regime across the border last weekend but was blocked by police, after both Koreas agreed at their latest summit not to disseminate propaganda material into each other’s country.
But Park Sang-hak, leader of Fighters for Free North Korea, claimed he already flew 150,000 leaflets into the North last Thursday from an undisclosed venue in Gimpo, Gyeonggi, accusing Pyongyang’s recent olive branch to Seoul of being a “disguised peace offensive.”
Park’s attempt to send more leaflets on Saturday noon from Paju, Gyeonggi, just south of the inter-Korean border, fell on the last day of the so-called North Korea Freedom Week, the last week of every April during which nongovernmental organizations promoting human rights in North Korea shed light on the regime’s atrocities. [Joong Ang Ilbo]
For those that don’t know Mr. Park Sang-hak the leader of Fighters for a Free North Korea, he is the person that the South Korean leftists have sent thugs to assault and the Kim regime has sent assassins to kill. Despite all of this Mr. Park continues to fearlessly launch balloons into North Korea. I think it is only a matter of time before the leftist thugs are sent after Park again.
For Suzanne Scholte pictured above I don’t know what visa she is on, but the Moon administration could try and silence her by claiming she is violating her visa by conducting political activity. It is pretty clear that for the next few years operations for these North Korean human rights organizations is going to be very difficult.
