More Unification Ministry cravenness:
”North Korea has complained about fliers distributed by activist groups here that criticize its regime since August last year, and when we asked for evidence it sent us the fliers via liaison officers on Aug. 10,” said Hwang Ha-soo, assistant minister in the ministry’s office for inter-Korean dialogue. They were distributed in the North by the Democracy Network Against a North Korean Gulag and the North Korea Christian Association and “primarily contained criticism of the North Korean regime and its leader, he said. “Such behavior by a handful of civic groups goes against an inter-Korean agreement and we are deeply sorry about it,” he added. “Domestic law does not ban such activities, but we urge them to stop immediately because they may strain the inter-Korean relationship.”
Yep.
17 Comments
Minifiction.
Wow. Wonder how they got the fliers into North Korea… Tied onto little helium balloons and sent on the winds from China? Somehow, I can’t imagine someone actually sneaking them in.
Like someone will START listening to the ROK gov’t now.
–Remort
Right, it is indeed balloons. ROK govt itself used to send cigarettes over in the old days, other consumer articles, fliers.
The appeasing of KJI continues unabated. Keep up the good work, Roh and Urinals, soon you may lose the support of the US, your only real friend in Asia!
No. From South Korea, using favourable winds. Each baloon has cotainer which is programmed to open after certain time, so it is possible to target more specific areas. Leaflets are not printed on normal paper, but on plastic sheets. Well-written texts.
As a matter of fact, I know the guys and I do not think they will stop. Many of them are North Koreans, you know…
There are also people smuggling stuff into NK. There are a couple of documentaries you can locate on the internet to download on the file sharing sites that talk about people sneaking information into and out of North Korea.
If I were Bill Gates rich, or the US government, I would be flooding NK with the latest data storage devices and the vast amount of information they can supply. I would try to faciliate the ease of transferring the data and keeping it hid.
I remember some months back seeing a report that some of the retired and current big shots who made it rich in the boom of the computer age (like Bill Gates) were working on projects to produce cheap, durable computers so that everyone in the world would have access to the information revolution. Here is a link to an article about one project that is working on a windup computer.
If I were the US government or a Bill Gates, I’d have special contracts to get this type of tool and I’d have them flowing into NK like a river with many branches. I’d make NK look like Office Depot’s dumping ground - there would be so many small, conceilable high tech data transfer tools floating around.
The printing press was a revolutionary tool for many movements that shaped different societies around the world. These days, you don’t even need print…..
And with a windup computer, you don’t even need electicity…..
Has the South Korean government asked Northern sympathizers in the South to stop littering the streets of Seoul with laminated propaganda cards bearing portraits of Kim Il-sung and heartwarming tributes to his legacy?
During wartime, isn’t collaborating with the enemy high treason and punishable by death? Let’s round of these communists and deport them to North Korea where they belong.
–Remort
“Has the South Korean government asked Northern sympathizers in the South to stop littering the streets of Seoul with laminated propaganda cards bearing portraits of Kim Il-sung and heartwarming tributes to his legacy?”
Wow, have they been handing these out in downtown Seoul? Disgusting gulag supporters. If I ever get handed one, I will throw it on the ground and step on it or tear it up (is it safe to do that?).
Try the neighborhoods around the universities. I have a nice little souvenir collection that I smuggled back home.
They were handing out stuff back in 1997 - perhaps under cover. I used to find fliers near my cheap apartment in Songnam where I taught. It was a lower income area, I was told, and that was why the groups were trying to drum up followers there.
Wow… a bit more high-tech than I would have expected, but nifty. And good for them, too.
Snow: The South Korean government requests that you refrain from any unnecessary provocation of the North in these difficult times.
Thanks for the warning Montclaire. Next time I’m handed a pamphlet praising the ‘Dear Leader’ I will get down on my knees for a full bow, just as Roh and his cronies do (though I refuse to wear the kneepads or to pucker).
The North Koreans actually prefer bare knees on asphalt. It shows you really care.
If I had told this to any Korean ten years, they would not have believed it. Koreans do change quickly.
In the same way, if the present course continues, all SKs will be serving KJI. In ten years.
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[...] When the Unification Ministry tells you not to do it (Via. The Marmot) The Unification Ministry on Friday urged activist groups to stop sending fliers attacking the North Korean regime to the North since that violates an inter-Korean agreement. [...]
[...] Meanwhile, the Marmot points another lapse of content-neutrality by South Korea (though it falls short of the actual or vicarious forms of censorship, including press censorship, we’ve seen in the past). North Korea has complained about fliers distributed by activist groups here that criticize its regime since August last year, and when we asked for evidence it sent us the fliers via liaison officers on Aug. 10,” said Hwang Ha-soo, assistant minister in the [UniFiction] ministry’s office for inter-Korean dialogue. They were distributed in the North by the Democracy Network Against a North Korean Gulag and the North Korea Christian Association and “primarily contained criticism of the North Korean regime and its leader, he said. “Such behavior by a handful of civic groups goes against an inter-Korean agreement and we are deeply sorry about it,” he added. “Domestic law does not ban such activities, but we urge them to stop immediately because they may strain the inter-Korean relationship.” [...]