A North Korean defector has flown huge balloons carrying Covid-19 aid and placards over the border – despite the North warning of a deadly attack over his activism.
Some 20 launches were recently made from a South Korean border town, carrying 20,000 masks and tens of thousands of Tylenol and Vitamin C tablets.
Park Sang-hak said one of his airborne messages read: ‘Let’s eradicate Kim Jong Un and (his sister) Kim Yo Jong’, along with their photos.
Mr Park, who has survived an assassination attempt and was targeted by a man armed with a metal pipe last month, has for years floated helium-filled balloons with numerous anti-Pyongyang leaflets featuring harsh criticism of the Kim family’s authoritarian rule.
The latest flight over the border came despite North Korean officials staggeringly claiming that his masks and other health products caused the country’s coronavirus outbreak.
The activist said no other propaganda statements were carried this time, aside from the ‘eradication’ message.
North Korean officials have been angered by his work, with Supreme Leader Kim’s powerful sister, Kim Yo Jong, claiming last month that North Korea would respond by ‘wiping out the South Korean authorities’ if ‘rubbish’ continued to be flown in from the neighbouring country.
Days after her warning, an attacker wielding a steel pipe attacked Mr Park at a rally in Seoul, breaking the activist’s arm.
The man was detained by police, while Mr Park believes North Korea ordered pro-Pyongyang forces in his new country to attack his group.
In a failed assassination attempt in 2011, South Korean authorities captured a North Korean agent who tried to kill Mr Park with a pen equipped with a poison needle.
He has also faced pressure from Seoul.
Last year, South Korea’s previous, liberal government – which sought to improve relations with the North, enforced a contentious new law criminalising civilian leafleting campaigns.
Mr Park was handed a suspended fine of three million won (£1,900) over previous balloon flights.
And after Mr Park sent balloons carrying medicine across the border in July, police said they were investigating his activities – though he says he was not contacted by police over the launch.
Now video footage appears to show him once again flying the balloons into North Korea, undeterred.
North Korea is extremely sensitive to leafleting campaigns and other outside attempts to criticise the Kim family’s authoritarian rule, with most people in the country having little access to foreign news.
In 2014, North Korea fired at balloons flying toward its territory, and in 2020 it destroyed an empty South Korean-built liaison office in the North to express its anger over leafleting.
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