N. Korea defectors drop leaflets condemning leader

[October 14, 2008]  YEONGJONG ISLAND, South Korea (AP) -- The North Korean trembled when he spotted the leaflet that had fluttered down from a balloon dispatched from the South. He snatched it, stuffed it into his pocket and ran to the bathroom to read it.

Park Sang-hak says he read that slip of vinyl -- which bragged about the good life North Korean defectors were enjoying in South Korea -- more than 15 times in disbelief.

Fifteen years later, Park is on the other side of the border. He defected to South Korea in 1999 and now helps launch propaganda balloons filled with leaflets denouncing the Stalinist regime.

The 40-foot balloons -- fueled by hydrogen and shaped like missiles -- are the most direct way to reach people living in one of the world's most isolated nations. Few North Koreans have access to cell phones or the Internet, and millions have no way of getting in contact with relatives living in South Korea.

For decades, the rival Koreas waged a fierce ideological battle using leaflets, loudspeakers and radio broadcasts across the heavily fortified border. At the height of the propoganda war, South Korea's military loudspeakers blared propaganda 20 hours a day, according to an official from the psychological unit of the South Korean army. He spoke on condition of anonymity, saying he was not authorized to speak to media.

But then the two Koreas embarked on a path to reconciliation that led to the first landmark summit between their leaders in 2000. They agreed in 2004 to end the propaganda.

Still, activists and defectors continue to send balloons filled with leaflets across the border, despite pleas from Seoul to stop at a time when inter-Korean relations are at their lowest point in years. The activists hope to spark a rebellion to overthrow Kim Jong Il.

Last week, the North threatened to expel South Koreans working at two joint projects north of the border and warned of "new military clashes" if leaflets criticizing Kim -- an illegal offense in North Korea -- continue.

South Korean Unification Ministry spokesman Kim Ho-nyeon said there are no legal grounds for prosecuting those who send leaflets, citing freedom of expression.

Park, 40, says he's an ardent advocate of the propaganda campaigns.

"I am trying to tell the truth to North Koreans who do not even know they are living under dictatorship," Park said Friday after releasing a balloon from a small fishing boat off Korea's west coast on the 63rd anniversary of North Korea's ruling Workers' Party.

The black-and-white leaflets urge North Koreans to rise up against Kim Jong Il.

"Kim Jong Il is the most vicious dictator and murderer of the 21st century, not the sun of the 21st century," the flyer reads. "Let us end Kim Jong Il's hereditary military dictatorship and liberate North Koreans."

Also featured on the leaflet: a diagram of Kim's alleged romantic relationships, including his wife and eight other women and their children -- a tactic designed to encourage traditional North Koreans to question their leader's morals. The organizers did not say where they the obtained information.

Some leaflets contain $1 bills or 10-yuan notes from China (worth $1.50) -- an amount believed to surpass the average monthly wage in North Korea.

To prevent people from reading the leaflets, Pyongyang warns citizens: "If you pick up this pamphlet, it will burn your hands," said Suzanne Scholte, chairwoman of the North Korea Freedom Coalition in the U.S., citing accounts from North Koreans who defected to the South last month. Her group helped finance the launch of 10 balloons Friday.

"There is nothing more powerful than North Koreans living in freedom reaching out to North Koreans living in slavery," said Scholte, who received the Seoul Peace Prize earlier in the week.

One defector, writer Kang Chol-hwan, said the leaflets serve as a wake-up call to North Koreans who are brainwashed to believe they live in a paradise.

"South Korea's leaflets show North Koreans that they can live well in the South," Kang said. "Leaflets and outside radio programs together are what prompted me to defect to the South" in 1992.

In an interesting twist, it was a photo of Kang that was printed on the very first leaflet Park Sang-hak saw and read furtively in 1993.

Park says he had been taught at school that Kang and another man pictured on the leaflet were executed after being caught trying to flee the North. But the photo on that leaflet showed that Kang, who later wrote a best-selling memoir, "The Aquariums of Pyongyang" about his childhood in a North Korean prison camp, was alive and well in South Korea.

"I was so shocked," Park said. "I knew that the Workers' Party lied, but how could they have gone that far?"

Now, Park says he and the two fellow defectors pictured on that leaflet are all South Korean citizens -- and good friends.

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[Associated Press; By KWANG-TAE KIM]

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