Sending leaflets to North Korea remains thorny issue

Park Sang-hak, North Korean defector who now heads the Fighters for Free North. / Korea Korea Times photo by Bae So-young

By Kim Ji-soo, Jung Da-min

Amid inter-Korean detente, private citizens launching balloons carrying North Korea leaflets and USB storage devices containing news and information about prosperous South Korea have been causing ire in North Korea, as well as South Korea.

One of the reasons was that in the historic April 27 Joint Panmunjeom Declaration, President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un agreed to cease all hostile acts against each other starting May 1, including loudspeaker broadcasts and leaflet launches along the border.

Yet, one prominent sender of information and "truth" about the outside world, Park Sang-hak, along with several members of his group the Fighters for Free North Korea, launched five vinyl balloons on May 12 from the border city of Paju, Gyeonggi Province. The balloons carried leaflets criticizing North Korea, as well as U.S. dollar bills and USBs.

The North on May 22 blasted Park and his group, referring to them as "human scum in provocative rash action" on the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA). The KCNA also criticized the Seoul government for not being firm in barring the civic groups.

Since the 1950-53 Korean War ended in an armistice, the two respective governments had engaged in propaganda broadcasts and spreading leaflets. However, there have been attempts to reduce their efforts, especially in this time of reconciliation. In 2004, the two Korean governments agreed to end propaganda activities including the sending of leaflets. In 2014, President Park Geun-hye's government did not bar them but warned that sending leaflets could harm security for residents living in the border area.

But as more North Korean defectors participate in the balloon launches, the civic nature of the campaign carries Koreans' basic rights of expression as well as the compelling appeal by insiders ― those who have lived in North Korea ― to let the truth and facts be known to the North Korean people.

The North Korean defectors group, Fighters for a Free North Korea, sends leaflets to North Korea in this May 2010 file photo. / Korea Times file

"If we the North Korean defectors can write letters, phone our relatives or family in the North or contact them via the internet, we would not have to send the messages and small gifts in the balloons," Park said. Park's messages and small gifts are carried large vinyl balloons that can cross the border when the wind is right.

"Having risked our lives to come to South Korea, we defectors have an obligation to tell people in our hometown we are alive, that the South is not the hell the North regime pronounces it to be," Park said. Park defected in 2000.

Park, like other defectors who send information and small gifts to North Korea, says the leaflets, because they are intended to reveal the truth to 20 million North Korean people, should not be stopped. The act also doesn't violate any laws, he argued.

In April, the South Korean government requested the groups refrain from such activities to allow for the detente surrounding the Korean Peninsula to fully blossom and lead eventually to a peace treaty.

"We are a civic group, a nongovernmental organization. Our job is to awaken people to the truth, and call issue to faulty government policies if there are any. Also, what the hypocritical regime (in the North) fears most are the facts and the truth," Park said.

Religious groups have also been sending other content the world is familiar with.

Pastor Eric Foley of Voice of the Martyrs Korea / Courtesy of Voice of the Martyrs Korea

Voice of the Martyrs (VOM) Korea is one of them. The group had previously hardly exposed its presence and activities to media. Pastor Eric Foley with the Christian NGO, however, decided to talk to the media since the major media started to portray the group as "anti-North Korean," and was pursuing the "anti-peace" process.

"We felt it was necessary for us to speak up, to clarify, that nothing we do is illegal," Foley said.

The pastor said the balloon launches are a part of the peace process as a civic activity in parallel with the government's peace-building efforts.

"We've done (the balloon launching) responsibly for 17 years," Foley said. "We did it, we even launched the balloons at the time that Kim Jong-il died, the sinking of the Cheonan, the Yeonpyeong bombing and at no point have any of our actions moved this peninsula closer to war."

VOM Korea sends copies of the North Korean Study Bible which uses the text of the Chosun Bible, the Bible in the North Korean dialect. The group uses weather balloons made of expandable vinyl when sending the copies of these Bibles.

"The balloons float as high as 80,000 feet (24,384 meters) before they pop in the air to leave only the books which according to the North Korean Constitution are legal," he said. "It's not even the South Korean Bible but it's the North Korean Bible."

The translation for the bible was a work commissioned by the North Korean government through their Chosun Christian Association which runs the state church. They produced the Common Translation (Pyongyang Version) in 1977, based on the Common Translation Bible published by the Korean Bible Society, an organization of the Protestant and Catholic Churches founded in 1947.

He said VOM Korea is following both North and South Korean laws, operating the launches as much as it can in accordance with government regulations.

"We are not doing anything in secret," he said. "We always work by alerting the police beforehand … and we launch without contacting reporters. We launch in unpopulated areas."

The group has not launched any balloons yet this year, but not because of the political progress, the pastor said.

"The winds shift from October until May, coming south. This is why North Korea launches from October to May, and so from May to October, it's possible to launch back."

Foley said he hopes the government's efforts to build peace on the peninsula should not result in South Korea becoming less democratic.

"We have experienced some pressures both from the public and from the government to curtail some of our activities in order to join that peace process," he said. "We support the government's work in building peace but we believe it's important to continue all of the parallel processes of peace."

Foley also said the peace process should not be reduced to inter-government negotiations over nuclear weapons.

"What we cannot do is tailor our activities to match the political winds of the day," he said.