Defector group says it will use drones for leaflet campaign against N. Korea

This photo shows one of the balloons containing 1 million anti-Pyongyang leaflets that Fighters for Free North Korea, a Seoul-based organization of North Korean defectors, claimed it sent toward North Korea in the South Korean border town of Gimpo, north of Seoul, on April 25-26, 2022. Newsis

A North Korean defectors' group said Monday it plans to fly unmanned aerial vehicles soon carrying anti-Pyongyang leaflets across the border.

Park Sang-hak, head of the Fighters for Free North Korea (FFNK), told Yonhap News Agency that his group will use drones to send the anti-Pyongyang leaflets "at the earliest date possible," citing difficulty in flying them in the usual giant plastic balloons during the winter.

He did not elaborate on when his group would send the leaflets. In April 2020, he claimed that his group had flown a drone carrying leaflets to the North's capital.

Park's remarks came as five North Korean drones intruded into the South's airspace late last month, with one of them even entering a no-fly zone around the presidential office in the central Seoul district of Yongsan.

The conservative Yoon Suk Yeol administration warned that it would suspend a 2018 inter-Korean agreement on reducing military tension if North Korea violates the South's territory again. The unification ministry earlier said it has also begun a legal review on resuming loudspeaker broadcasting and the distribution of anti-Pyongyang leaflets across the border.

Since the revision of the Development of Inter-Korean Relations Act in 2021, the South's government has banned the sending of propaganda leaflets across the border, with violators subject to a maximum prison term of three years or a fine of 30 million won ($24,100). (Yonhap)