Millions of waterproof leaflets via balloons force North Korean authorities to scramble
Friday, December 5, 2008 Free Headline Alerts
By Donald Kirk
SEOUL — The enduring image of the current North-South Korean standoff may well be the spectacle of balloons shaped like enormous condoms fluttering northwards on a mission to alert North Koreans to the evils of "Dear Leader" Kim Jong-il.
"The campaign is going very well," said Choi Hyo-an, a retired South Korean army colonel. "Now the North Korean soldiers are gathering the leaflets. That means the North Korean people are picking them up."
South Korean officials have finally persuaded the activists responsible for the balloon launches to knock it off. "For the time being," said the balloonists in a formal statement, "we have decided to stop sending the leaflets and observe changes in North Korea’s attitude".
They yielded after the chairman of the ruling Grand National Party extolled the advantages of the "bigger goal" of improving relations with the North, as the Sunshine policy of reconciliation of the previous decade fades into escalating threats amid an atmosphere of semi-crisis.
Evidence of the balloon campaign's success is that it managed, unlike the broadcasts of a half-dozen private radio stations in the South, to thoroughly annoy the North Korean authorities. The messages carried by the millions of leaflets which descended on the North’s southern provinces provoked it on Dec. 1 to severely curtail access to the Kaesong industrial complex, which lies just above the demilitarized zone between the two Koreas.
Relations sank to their lowest level in years with the expulsion of half the South Koreans from the complex, leaving 880 South Koreans to supervise more than 35,000 workers at the 88 light industrial enterprises there owned by South Korean companies.
"The leaflets are what triggered the problem" said the vice chairman of the complex, Yoo Chang-geun, though "the underlying problem is the cutting of communications between the two Koreas", he added. The president of a high-tech company with a plant in the complex, Yoo pleaded for factories there to be able to operate free of politics.
The North Koreans "want to keep up the pressure on the South Koreans", said Lee Jong-min, dean of the Graduate School of International Studies at Yonsei University. "They are quite upset about the leaflets, which said Kim Jong-il is living like an emperor when most people are starving."
The South-North confrontation parallels the larger nuclear standoff in the uncertain period of transition in the U.S. from the George W Bush to Barack Obama administration. U.S. nuclear envoy Christopher Hill, currently meeting his North Korean counterpart, Kim Kye-gwan, in Singapore, still hopes for North Korea's agreement on a "verification protocol" on the disablement of its nuclear facilities, which it strongly opposes.
The question is whether South Korea will remain firm as the North puts the squeeze on Kaesong. The government, while calling for the balloonists to stop their launches, has repeatedly said it had no legal authority to stop them - and did not seem at all unhappy about the messages wafting over the North.
A pair of plain-clothes policemen relaxed in a large civilian vehicle as they watched a typical balloon launch, several days before the balloonists reluctantly agreed to suspend them. The scene was a lonely parking lot in front of the ruins of a church destroyed during the Korean War, just below the demilitarized zone in the mountainous central region.
Lee Min-bo, who escaped from the North 15 years ago, intoned a prayer and stared hopefully every time an aide released a balloon carrying ten thousand leaflets in bags sealed by a timer which then explodes, sending them fluttering down over North Korea. In two hours, he sent ten balloons through a low cloud cover into wind currents that a detailed check of weather reports showed were blowing steadily from south to north.
Lee, a devout Christian, described the balloon campaign as "a kind of psychological warfare." Financed by South Korean Christian groups, he said he wrote leaflets mixed religious messages with news about the South’s "high standard of living" and "the truth" about North Korea.
As he was launching his balloons, about ten bearing 100,000 leaflets printed on waterproof plastic, South Korean managers and officials were leaving the Kaesong complex 60 kilometers to the west under orders from North Korea.
The police remained on 24-hour duty to ensure the safety of Lee and his aides. "Every morning they call and ask, ‘Are you Ok’," said Choi, the retired colonel. The defectors, he said, "have become Christian and want to work for the Lord".