South Korea yesterday urged North Korea to scrap a plan to launch propaganda leaflets across the border, after Pyongyang said it was ready to float 12 million leaflets in what would be the largest such psychological campaign against its southern rival.
Pyongyang has in the past few weeks issued a series of vitriolic condemnations of Seoul over anti-North Korea leaflets, which defectors based in South Korea send across the border — usually attached to balloons or floated in bottles.
Pyongyang said it would have nothing more to do with Seoul and last week blew up a liaison office on its side of the border that symbolized inter-Korean rapprochement, while threatening to bolster its military presence in and near the demilitarized zone.
Photo: EPA-EFE
South Korean Ministry of Unification spokesman Yoh Sangkey said that North Korea must suspend its plan to send anti-Seoul leaflets that “are not helpful to South-North relations at all.”
Earlier yesterday, North Korea said it had manufactured 12 million propaganda leaflets to be floated toward South Korea aboard 3,000 balloons and other unspecified delivery equipment.
“Our plan of distributing the leaflets against the enemy is an eruption of the unquenchable anger of all the people and the whole society,” the North’s official Korean Central News Agency said. “The time for retaliatory punishment is drawing near.”
One of the leaflets shown in the official Rodong Sinmun carried an image of South Korean President Moon Jae-in drinking from a cup and accused him of having “eaten it all, including the north-south Korea agreement.”
South Korean Minister of Defense Jeong Kyeong-doo yesterday told lawmakers that how his military responds to potential North Korean leafleting depends on what delivery equipment the North would use.
A South Korean activist has said that he would also drop about 1 million leaflets over the border around Thursday, the 70th anniversary of the start of the 1950-1953 Korean War.
South Korean officials have said they would ban civilian activists from launching balloons toward North Korea.
Both Koreas used to regularly send leaflets and loudspeaker broadcasts to the other side, but agreed to stop such activities in the Panmunjom Declaration that Moon and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un signed at their first summit in 2018.
North Korea has begun setting up loudspeakers at multiple locations along the border to broadcast propaganda, the South’s Yonhap news agency reported yesterday, citing an official of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Inter-Korean relations have been in a deep freeze following the collapse of a summit in Hanoi between Kim and US President Donald Trump early last year over what the nuclear-armed North would be willing to give up in exchange for a loosening of sanctions.
ESCALATING TENSIONS: The US called for restraint and meaningful dialogue after Beijing threatened Taiwanese independence advocates with the death sentence The US on Monday condemned China’s “escalatory and destabilizing language and actions” toward Taiwan after Beijing last week announced new guidelines to punish supporters of Taiwanese independence. Asked about the guidelines, which included the death sentence for “diehard” independence advocates, US Department of State spokesman Matthew Miller said: “We strongly condemn the escalatory and destabilizing language and actions from PRC [People’s Republic of China] officials.” “We continue to urge restraint and no unilateral change to the status quo,” he said at the press briefing. The US urges China to “engage in meaningful dialogue with Taiwan,” Miller said, adding that “threats and legal
DEATH THREAT: A MAC official said that it has urged Beijing to avoid creating barriers that would impede exchanges across the Strait, but it continues to do so People should avoid unnecessary travel to China after Beijing issued 22 guidelines allowing its courts to try in absentia and sentence to death “Taiwan independence separatists,” the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said yesterday as it raised its travel alert for China, including Hong Kong and Macau, to “orange.” The guidelines published last week “severely threaten the personal safety of Taiwanese traveling to China, Hong Kong and Macau,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesman Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) told a news conference in Taipei. “Following a comprehensive assessment, the government considers it necessary to elevate the travel alert to orange from yellow,” Liang said. Beijing has
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) yesterday said that the Chinese Communist Party was planning and implementing “major” reforms, ahead of a political conclave that is expected to put economic recovery high on the agenda. Chinese policymakers have struggled to reignite growth since late 2022, when restrictions put in place due to the COVID-19 pandemic were lifted. The world’s second-largest economy is beset by a debt crisis in the property sector, persistently low consumption and high unemployment among young people. Policymakers “are planning and implementing major measures to further deepen reform in a comprehensive manner,” Xi said in a speech at the Great Hall
WATER CONCERNS: The CWA encouraged people to conserve water, as fewer typhoons would bring less rain, and the plum rain season brought in only 60% of average rainfall About two to four typhoons are forecast to come close to Taiwan between now and November, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday, as it also forecast that extreme heat would persist throughout the week, only dropping by 1°C after Friday. The number of typhoons is slightly lower than the average of three to five, reflecting a weakening El Nino weather pattern and the possibility of a La Nina pattern approaching, CWA Weather Forecast Center Director Chen Yi-liang (陳怡良) told a news conference in Taipei. While typically fewer typhoons develop under such conditions, their routes would be more likely to pass near