Balloons away!
I've posted about the practice of South Koreans floating balloons across the boarder to NorKor before, but now I have a actual picture and more news. Apparently they are even floating cassette and video tapes. Amazing. Now that I am watching the documentary Kimjongilia on Netflix, even I feel like floating a balloon across. NorKor must be feeling a bit more insecure, because now they've threatened to shoot people with balloons. I wonder how that madness would play out along the 38th Parallel?? Actually, no. I don't want to know.
N. Korea Threatens South on Balloon Propaganda
By MARK McDONALD
Published: February 27, 2011
SEOUL — A massive propaganda campaign by the South Korean military drew an ominous warning from North Korea on Sunday, with Pyongyang saying that it would fire across the border at anyone sending helium balloons carrying anti-North Korean messages into the country.
A statement carried by the North’s official news agency said the balloon-and-leaflet campaign “by the puppet military in the frontline area is a treacherous deed and a wanton challenge” to peace on the Korean Peninsula. The statement, attributed to a North Korean military official, said further balloon sorties would be seen as offensive provocations that would result in “direct fire” by North Korean Army units.
The warning came as nearly 13,000 U.S. troops and 200,000 South Korean forces were due to begin an annual set of air, land and sea exercises on Monday. The U.S. military said it had informed the North about the drills, which it characterized as “entirely defensive in nature.” North Korea assailed the exercises as war-mongering and said it would respond against American and South Korean Forces with an “all-out war” if provoked. it threatened to turn Seoul into “a sea of fire,” a baleful phrase it has used before.
The leaflets — nearly 2.5 million of which have been floated into the North this month — ridicule the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-il, and call for people in the beleaguered North to rise up against his regime. The leaflets have long been a sore point for the North because they are seen mainly by soldiers deployed along the tense, highly militarized border.
The balloons, each of which contains thousands of leaflets, cassette tapes and videos, will soon be carrying news of the populist uprisings in the Middle East, according to Song Young-sun, a South Korean lawmaker who sits on the National Defense Committee. Ms. Song said the new messages would describe the rejection of dictatorships and dynastic succession, a pointed reference to Mr. Kim’s harsh rule and the grooming of his youngest son, Kim Jong-un, as his heir apparent.
“The most dangerous virus for the regime is the truth about the outside world and the truth about themselves,” said a senior South Korean official. “They try to contain and prevent information from infiltrating. But they don’t have a vaccine against this kind of virus.”
The senior official also described the jointly operated Kaesong industrial park as “a valuable channel for the virus getting into North Korea.” About 40,000 North Koreans work at South Korean-owned factories at Kaesong, located inside the North, where they can get news about the wealth and relative freedom in the South.
North Korea warned last October that its artillery units would fire across the border to destroy South Korean loudspeakers if anti-Pyongyang broadcasts resumed as part of any new campaign of psychological warfare. (The loudspeakers have not been used since a moratorium began in 2004).
That warning came before the countries exchanged artillery fire in November, with two South Korean marines and two civilians being killed on the island of Yeonpyeong. Each side has accused the other of starting the fight, and Pyongyang said five North Koreans were killed by return artillery fire from the South.
Public anger in South Korea coalesced over its civilian deaths, and the military toughened its rules of engagement to include the use of air strikes against the North.
The military’s confidence also was bolstered last month by the navy’s successful rescue of a South Korean ship that had been hijacked by Somali pirates. A U.S. military official in Seoul, in praising the improving capabilities of South Korean forces, called the retaking of the ship “a good win for them.”
“Their ability to reach out and touch North Korea if there’s a provocation is significant,” said the military official, speaking anonymously because he had not been cleared by the Pentagon to comment openly about inter-Korean matters. “They could just do it unilaterally.”
