Communist North Korea accused South Korea on Tuesday of waging ”psychological warfare”, and said the launch of propaganda leaflets across their heavily fortified border could spark a military clash.
The documents criticise North leader Kim Jong-Il, describing him as a murderous dictator and calling for an end to his rule.
The official government newspaper, Minju Joson, said the Seoul government is condoning the spreading by South Korean activists of the leaflets despite Pyongyang’s repeated protests.
”The Lee Myung-Bak group is inciting the rightist conservatives to strengthen and expand psychological warfare against our military and people,” the paper said in reference to the South Korean president.
It said the spreading of the leaflets would result in ”very grave consequences” by triggering accidental border clashes, which could develop into a full-scale military confrontation.
”There is no doubt the military confrontation … will expand into a new war, a nuclear war, and the entire nation will suffer from the damage,” it said.
Early this month activists, including former North Korean defectors, released 10 large balloons carrying 100 000 leaflets from a fishing boat near the border in the Yellow Sea.
The action came despite appeals to desist from Seoul’s Unification Ministry and 76 South Korean business firms operating in a joint industrial zone in the North’s Kaesong city near the border.
Pyongyang had earlier warned that South Korea must stop the leaflets or risk expulsion from the industrial zone.
Minju Joson did not mention the expulsion threat.
But it complained that the leaflets had spread into its Hwanghae and Kangwon border provinces, including Kaesong and a Seoul-run resort at Mount Kumgang near the border.
The Fighters for Free North Korea, one of the groups involved, says about 1,5-million leaflets have been floated into the North every year since 2004.
The two Koreas agreed at a 2000 peace summit to halt the government-level propaganda of the Cold War era. But South Korean Christians and defectors from the North have continued launching balloons carrying leaflets.
Small short-wave radios are also sometimes floated over the border, along with one-dollar bills. Radios in the North are pre-tuned only to official broadcasting stations. — AFP
