NYTimes | North Korea
threatened on Friday to attack the South if activists proceeded with a
plan to send leaflets across the border criticizing the North Korean
regime. South Korea’s military said it would immediately strike back if
the North did so.
The exchange of saber-rattling, though hardly unprecedented, comes at a politically sensitive time in South Korea,
where a presidential election is to be held in December and parties are
highly attuned to how a surprise North Korean move might affect the
outcome.
An umbrella group of anti-North Korean organizations, mostly led by
defectors from the North, has announced plans to release balloons
bearing propaganda leaflets on Monday in Imjingak, a South Korean
village near the western border with North Korea. Activists have
conducted similar balloon launches near the border before.
The statement Friday, released by the North’s official Korean Central
News Agency, said that as soon as a balloon launch is detected, the
North Korean People’s Army “without warning will start a merciless
attack” targeting Imjingak and its surroundings. “The leaflets are a
most undisguised act of psychological warfare, a violation of the
armistice and an intolerable act of war,” the statement said. It urged
South Koreans to leave the targeted area.
The two Koreas are technically at war, the 1950-53 Korean War having
ended with an armistice rather than a peace treaty. They have engaged in
several skirmishes in recent years.
Speaking to lawmakers on Friday, the South Korean defense minister, Kim Kwan-jin, noted that North Korea
had issued similar threats before about leaflets from the South,
without following up on them. But he said that if North Korea does
strike, “we will eradicate their origin of attack.”
Park Sang-hak, a North Korean defector who is organizing the leaflet
campaign, said his group remained undeterred. “We send facts about the
North Korean regime to the North Korean people through peaceful means,”
he said. “We will send our balloons as planned.”
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