An activist group in South Korea announced Thursday that it launched 1 million propaganda leaflets into North Korea.
A defector-run group, Fighters for a Free North Korea, released 20 balloons carrying anti-Pyongyang leaflets on Monday and Tuesday, breaking a contentious South Korean law criminalizing sending leaflets, flash drives, and money to North Korea.
The leaflets contained news about the incoming South Korean president, Yoon Suk-yeol, and criticized North Korea’s nuclear program as a “threat to humanity,” along with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s government, as reported by the Washington Post.
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The group’s leader, Park Sang-hak, who was born in North Korea before defecting to South Korea with his family, is the first person to be tried for violating the law after releasing leaflets last April to North Korea with $1 bills. The group had previously paused activities for a year.
“For all these years, North Korean residents have been brainwashed that the Korean War broke out with a deadly raid by Americans and South Koreans,” Sang-hak said. “Now as a free citizen of South Korea, I have the mission of liberating my brothers in the North from the information black hole.”
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The release of the leaflets is punishable by up to three years in prison under a law passed in 2020, which makes it illegal to send select types of items to North Korea without the South Korean government’s permission.
Passing democratic materials, Bibles, political propaganda, and food to North Korea has been a long-held practice until the recent law discouraged such activities.
