Ministry requests defectors' restraint for anti

Fighters for a Free North Korea, an anti-Pyongyang activist group, prepares to fly a balloon containing anti-Pyongyang leaflets in the South Korean border city of Paju in this December 2021 file photo. Yonhap

Korea's unification ministry has asked a North Korean defectors' group to refrain from carrying out a campaign to send anti-Pyongyang leaflets using drones, according to a ministry official Tuesday.

The request came after Park Sang-hak, head of the Fighters for Free North Korea (FFNK), said Monday that the group plans to fly unmanned aerial vehicles soon carrying leaflets critical of the North across the inter-Korean border.

"To abide by related laws, take into account inter-Korean situations and protect people's lives and safety, there is a need (for activists) to refrain from staging leaflet campaigns that could cause unnecessary risks," the official told reporters on condition of anonymity.

The conservative Yoon Suk Yeol administration warned that it would suspend a 2018 inter-Korean agreement designed to reduce military tensions if the North violates the South's territory again in the wake of North Korea's latest drone infiltrations into the South.

The unification ministry said last week it has begun a legal review on whether it is possible to resume loudspeaker broadcasting and the distribution of anti-Pyongyang leaflets in case the military accord is suspended.

By law, the government has banned the sending of propaganda leaflets across the border, with violators subject to face a prison term of up to three years or a fine of 30 million won ($24,160).

Meanwhile, the number of North Korean defectors coming to the South stayed below 100 for the second straight year in 2022 due largely to the North's tight border controls over COVID-19, according to the ministry.

The number of such North Korean defectors reached 67 last year, slightly up from 63 in the previous year. But the 2022 tally was 72.4 percent down from 229 recorded for 2020. (Yonhap)