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| This photo provided on June 20, 2020, by the North Korean government shows North Koreans prepare anti-South Korea propaganda leaflets in North Korea. (Korean Central News Agency/Korea News Service via AP) |
North Korea said Sunday it has no intention to cancel its plan to send anti-South Korea leaflets across the border, calling an inter-Korean agreement that bans such activity "a dead document."
On Saturday, the North's state media said Pyongyang was printing anti-Seoul propaganda materials in large numbers and preparing to send them across the border. South Korea's unification ministry expressed regret and urged Pyongyang to withdraw the plan immediately, calling it a violation of an inter-Korean summit agreement.
"We, clearly aware that leaflet scattering is the violation of the North-South agreement, do not have any intent to reconsider or change our plan at a time when the North-South relations have already been broken down," a spokesman for the North's United Front Department (UFD) said in a statement carried by the Korean Central News Agency.
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| This photo provided on June 20, 2020, by the North Korean government shows North Koreans prepare anti-South Korea propaganda leaflets in North Korea. (Korean Central News Agency/Korea News Service via AP) |
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| In this photo provided on June 20, 2020, by the North Korean government, anti-South Korean propaganda leaflets are stacked in North Korea. The North's military has also announced plans to support their civilians flying anti-South Korean propaganda leaflets in areas near the land and sea border, after the activists in South Korea floated propaganda leaflets across the border. (Korean Central News Agency/Korea News Service via AP) |
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| This photo, captured from the website of North Korea's Korean Central News Agency on June 20, 2020, shows printed pictures of South Korean President Moon Jae-in with cigarette butts in a plastic bag, after the North has said it will send anti-Seoul propaganda leaflets from the North into the South. Yonhap |
"The South Korean authorities must no longer talk about the agreement that has been already reduced to a dead document," the spokesperson added.
Sending propaganda leaflets into the South is one of the retaliatory measures the North has vowed to take in response to anti-Pyongyang leaflets that defectors in the South send via large balloons into the North.
North Korea has called South Korea an "enemy" and vowed to cut off all cross-border communication lines in anger over the leafleting issue. Last week, it even blew up a joint liaison office in its border town of Kaesong that was opened as a result of a 2018 summit between their leaders.
The North has bristled at South Korea failing to stop defector groups and other activists from sending propaganda leaflets criticizing its leaders.
The South Korean government has sought to legislate a ban against leafleting and filed a criminal complaint against two defector groups engaging in such activity. The North, however, criticized Seoul for moving too late and coming up with "little more advanced excuses."
"Before belatedly touting violation and principle, they should have looked back on who perpetrated first and connived at acts that lighted the fuse of the North-South conflict and who deteriorated the situation to the catastrophe," the UFD spokesperson said.
"When they are put in our shoes, the South Korean authorities will be able to understand even a bit how disgustedly we looked at them and how offending it was for us." (Yonhap)
