SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea criticized rival South Korea on Wednesday for putting off a legislation that banned non-public activists from sending anti-Pyongyang propaganda leaflets to the North, insisting that such actions quantity to mental struggle and dangerous to respond with a “shower of shells.”
The commentary printed by means of North Korea’s reliable Korean Central News Agency was once the primary time state media commented at the September determination by means of South Korea’s Constitutional Court to invalidate a 2020 legislation that criminalized leafleting. The determination was once in line with considerations that it excessively limited unfastened speech.
The ruling got here in reaction to a grievance filed by means of North Korean defector-activists within the South. They incorporated Park Sang-hak, who has been a widespread goal of the North Korean govt’s anger for his yearslong marketing campaign of flying leaflets around the border with massive balloons.
Park and different defectors from the North for years have used large helium-filled balloons to release leaflets criticizing the management of North Korean ruler Kim Jong Un, his nuclear guns ambitions and the rustic’s dismal human rights file. The leaflets are regularly packaged with U.S. buck expenses and USB sticks containing information about international news.
North Korea is terribly delicate about any outdoor try to undermine Kim’s authoritarian management as he maintains tight regulate over the rustic’s 26 million folks whilst significantly proscribing their get right of entry to to international news.
The legislation, crafted by means of the former liberal govt in Seoul that pursued inter-Korean engagement, was once handed six months after the North expressed its frustration over the leaflets by means of blowing up an inter-Korean liaison place of work within the North Korean border the town of Kaesong in June 2020.
Tensions between the Koreas are at their easiest level years because the tempo of each Kim’s guns exams and the South Korea’s blended army workouts with the United States have intensified in a tit-for-tat cycle.
In feedback attributed to a political commentator, KCNA warned that the North would imagine leafleting “high-level psychological warfare” or even a “preemptive attack conducted before a start of war.”
“Under the present situation where a spark may lead to explosion, there is no guarantee that such military conflicts as in Europe and the Middle East would not break out on the Korean Peninsula,” KCNA stated, it appears referring to Russia’s conflict on Ukraine and the violence in Israel and Gaza.
The company claimed that long run leafleting campaigns may just cause an unparalleled reaction from North Korea’s army, which stands in a position to “pour a shower of shells” towards the websites the place the leaflets are introduced, in addition to the “bulwark of the region of (South) Korean puppets.”
While North Korea regularly makes atypical threats that aren’t performed, the feedback nonetheless mirrored the animosity between the rival Koreas amid a extended freeze in international relations.
The commentary got here hours sooner than U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken was once to arrive in Seoul for talks with allies at the rising risk posed by means of North Korea’s army nuclear program and Pyongyang’s rising alignment with Russia. North Korea has been supplying artillery shells and different munitions to Russia in fresh months to gas its conflict efforts in Ukraine, U.S. and South Korean officers have stated, they usually suspect that Kim might be in quest of Russian applied sciences and different help in go back to improve his personal army. Both Pyongyang and Moscow have denied the accusations that North Korea has been offering Russia with munitions.
In a separate article, the KCNA condemned the deliberate visits to South Korea by means of Blinken and U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, who travels to Seoul the next week, describing them as “warmongers” bringing a “new war cloud” to Asia.
Blinken was once in Tokyo on Tuesday participating in the second one and ultimate day of the Group of 7 Foreign Minister talks, the place the senior diplomats “strongly condemned” North Korea’s ballistic missile exams in addition to its alleged fingers transfers to Russia, which can be each in violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions towards the North, in accordance to Japan’s Foreign Ministry.
In 2022, the North blamed its COVID-19 outbreak on balloons flown from South Korea — a extremely questionable declare that gave the impression to be an try to hang its rival accountable amid rising tensions over its nuclear guns program.
North Korea additionally fired at propaganda balloons flying towards its territory in 2014. South Korea then returned fireplace, however there have been no casualties.
In his newest release on Sept. 20, Park stated he flew 20 balloons wearing 200,000 leaflets and 1,000 USB sticks from the South Korean border island of Ganghwa.
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