South Korea activist Park Sang-hak says he’s sending anti-Pyongyang leaflets to the North once more

The outgoing liberal authorities in South Korea handed the legislation in 2020, regardless of criticisms that it prioritized enhancing ties with the North over standing up for human rights.

South Korea to criminalize sending leaflets into North Korea, bowing to regime

The legislation makes it a criminal offense punishable by as much as three years in jail to ship promotional pamphlets and storage units akin to flash drives, cash and different objects of worth to the North with out the Seoul authorities’s permission.

The group’s chief, Park Sang-hak, turned the primary particular person to be charged underneath the legislation for his previous leafleting actions and is on trial. Park stated he’ll problem the legislation within the Constitutional Courtroom.

After a year-long pause amid police investigations and trials, Park resumed the leaflet marketing campaign on Monday, saying that he’ll “fortunately settle for jail phrases” for his “righteous acts.” He escaped North Korea in 2000 to settle within the democratic South and has led leaflet campaigns since 2004.

The leaflets launched this week criticize North Korea’s nuclear and missile developments, which Pyongyang promoted in a high-profile army parade on Wednesday, as a “menace to humanity.” A photograph of South Korea’s president-elect Yoon Suk-yeol has been included within the leaflets to advertise democracy and denounce North Korean chief Kim Jong Un’s dynastic dictatorship, the group stated.

The crackdown on leaflets is more likely to be contested in Yoon’s incoming conservative authorities. Kwon Younger-se, nominated as Seoul’s unification minister to guide inter-Korean affairs, stated it’s “constitutionally problematic” to outlaw such leaflet campaigns in a democratic nation.

Officers of the outgoing authorities stated the legislation prevents pointless North Korean provocations and protects South Korean residents within the border space. The front-line residents have lengthy complained concerning the propaganda efforts by activists, citing North Korean threats of “focused taking pictures” on the origin of leaflets.

Seoul’s Unification Ministry stated on Thursday that it’s working with authorities to verify whether or not the group had in reality launched the leaflets and stated it is going to correctly implement the legislation to guard the security of residents alongside the border.

For years, defectors and activist teams have despatched printed supplies and flash drives containing South Korean information, films and dramas to North Korea in hopes that extraordinary residents there’ll decide them up and study concerning the oppression imposed by the totalitarian regime and relative poverty of their nation. The supplies dispatched throughout the border usually embody assist akin to rice, medication and greenback payments.

North Korea’s totalitarian regime is extraordinarily delicate concerning the propaganda efforts by exterior activists to erode the nation’s data blockade. It blew up an inter-Korean liaison workplace on its territory in 2020 after Kim Yo Jong, the highly effective sister of the North Korean chief, lashed out on the leafleteers and threatened retaliation.