Date:09/01/2009 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2009/01/09/stories/2009010956141400.htm

International

Aid on balloons for South Korea

SEOUL: South Korean activists said on Thursday they would attach North Korean money to the anti-Pyongyang leaflets they float across the border next month.

Activists, including North Korean defectors and Christians, have been sending gas-filled balloons over the heavily-fortified border for years as a way of getting information into the secretive state.

Some leaflets have one dollar bills attached, to encourage people to pick them up despite the risk of punishment in the Communist state.

The leaflets became a source of tension between the two sides last year, especially after they touched on the reported health problems of North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il, who is believed to have suffered a stroke last summer.

The North began arresting people caught with the leaflets or dollars bills in November last year, said Park Sang-Hak, who heads the Fighters for Free North Korea, a group representing defectors.

“I heard from my informants in the North that those carrying our leaflets or dollar bills have been jailed. So we will start sending leaflets stuffed with 5,000 North Korean won notes next month,” he told AFP.

South Korea’s main spy agency, the National Intelligence Service (NIS), said North Korea had punished the unauthorised possession of U.S. dollars.

A 5,000 won note is enough to buy five kg of rice in the food-starved country, he said, adding he would acquire North Korean bills through China.

The North Korean Won is not traded legally, but 5,000 won is currently worth around one U.S. dollar and 40 cents on the black market.

Mr. Park has teamed up with Choi Sung-Yong, who heads a group campaigning for the return of South Koreans abducted by the North, to spearhead the leaflet launches.

The South’s Unification Ministry, which handles cross-border ties, urged Mr. Park and other groups to stop the leaflet launches.

It also said the government would see whether it was legal for his group to bring in North Korean bills. — AFP

South Koreans can bring in North Korean money only for trade purposes, the ministry said.

The North has accused the Seoul government of condoning the leaflet launches but authorities here have no legal way of stopping them.

Inter-Korean ties began to worsen after South Korea’s conservative President Lee Myung-Bak took office in February last year.

Lee rolled back his liberal predecessors’ engagement policy and linked major economic assistance to the North’s willingness to make progress over denuclearisation.

The North has suspended all government-level talks.

Last month Pyongyang expelled hundreds of South Korean workers from a Seoul-funded industrial estate and imposed strict border controls, blaming what it calls Seoul’s confrontational policy.

The estate, just north of the heavily fortified border, was built as a symbol of reconciliation. More than 37,000 North Koreans work at 88 South Korean firms there, earning much-needed hard currency.