South Korea said it will move to stop defectors from sending letters and aid across the border into North Korea after the hermit nation cut off communications in protest of the messages.
The country announced the move on Wednesday, a day after North Korea suspended its communications hotlines with its southern neighbor. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s sister, Kim Yo Jong, recently called the country’s defectors “human scum little short of wild animals.” She blasted South Korea for allowing two groups, the Kuensaem Education Center and Fighters for a Free North Korea, to conduct its operations.
South Korea has been trying to improve bilateral relations between the two countries, and Unification Ministry spokesman Yoh Sang-key said that the dissident groups “have created tension between the two Koreas and caused danger to the border-area residents’ lives and safety,” according to Reuters.
The defector groups are known for tethering pamphlets, letters, medicine, and rice to balloons and flying them over the border into the poverty-stricken dictatorship. Fighters For Free North Korea, run by Park Sang-hak, who fled North Korea two decades ago, has been sending pamphlets across the border for the past 15 years.
“You can never buy peace with flattery and begging,” Park, one of about 33,000 defectors who live in South Korea, said after the country’s announcement.
