North Korea slams ‘psychological warfare’ as South repeals ban on anti-Pyongyang leaflets

South Korea’s constitutional court recently struck down a law that effectively banned the cross-border leaflet campaigns, saying it was unconstitutional
The North lashed out over the move, warning that it could cause a military clash in the Korean peninsula similar to those in the Middle East and Europe

North Korea

Park Chan-kyong

Published: 5:30pm, 9 Nov 2023

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North Korea’s state media has condemned the decision by the South’s top court to repeal a law banning activists from sending anti-Pyongyang leaflets across the border, warning of military clashes similar to those in the Middle East and Europe.

The warning by the Korean Central News Agency’s (KCNA) on Wednesday underscores Pyongyang’s growing concern that the South’s conservative government would resume “psychological warfare” through such propaganda leaflets and loudspeakers near the border, analysts said.

South Korea’s constitutional court in September struck down a 2020 law that effectively banned the cross-border leaflet campaigns, saying it was unconstitutional and restricted the right to freedom of expression.

The ruling against the Development of Inter-Korean Relations Act, passed under former president Moon Jae-in’s liberal administration, paved the way for activists and defectors from North Korea to resume sending leaflets across the border without facing up to three years in prison or fines of 30 million won (US$22,830).

North Koreans prepare anti-South Korea propaganda leaflets. Photo: KCNA/dpa

“Leaflet launches irritate the North the most, as the leaflets contain content that could undermine Kim Jong-un’s authority and legitimacy,” Cho Han-bum, a senior analyst at the Korea Institute for National Unification (KINU), told This Week in Asia.

The materials usually emphasise, for example, the fact that Kim’s mother was an ethnic Korean living in former colonial master Japan – a group that is looked down upon by North Koreans. “If this fact is out in the open, Kim would be a subject of public ridicule in the North,” he said.

Activists in South Korea have increasingly come up with sophisticated ways of spreading leaflets, including sending “smart balloons” capable of releasing leaflets at intervals over different areas in the North, making it almost impossible for Pyongyang’s military to respond in time, Cho said.

In comments attributed to a North Korean political commentator, KCNA on Wednesday warned that Pyongyang would consider leafleting to be akin to “pre-emptive attack conducted before a start of war”.

“Under the present situation where a spark may lead to explosion, there is no guarantee that such military conflicts as in Europe and the Middle East would not break out on the Korean peninsula,” it said, apparently referring to Russia’s war in Ukraine and the conflict in Israel and Gaza.

The state news agency claimed that future leafleting campaigns in the South could trigger an unprecedented response from North Korea’s military, which it said stood ready to “pour a shower of shells” towards the sites where the leaflets were launched, as well as the “bulwark of the region of [South Korean] puppets”.

A propaganda message is displayed on the facade of the pyramid-shaped Ryugyong Hotel in Pyongyang. North Korea’s KCNA claimed that future leafleting campaigns in the South could trigger an unprecedented response from North Korea’s military. Photo: AP

Concerns are growing over the North’s deepening military ties with Russia and its suspected links with Hamas militants, amid the ongoing conflicts in the Middle East and in Ukraine.

Yang Moo-jin, a political-science professor of the University of North Korean Studies, said however that the statements issued by KCNA usually carried much less weight than those of government agencies or the military.

“We don’t need to overreact to this statement. If such a statement comes from the military joint chiefs of staff, we would have to worry about possible military actions by the North,” he said.

A North Korean official document issued in May reportedly said Pyongyang banned its citizens from touching such leaflets, and accused the South of “transmitting objects that pose a risk of coronavirus transmission”.

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In October 2014, the North used machine guns to shoot down balloons from the South that carried leaflets criticising the Pyongyang regime, and the South retaliated by firing back across the border. Some North Korean bullets landed in the South, but no one was hurt.

The North also blew up an inter-Korean liaison office in its border town of Kaesong in 2020, in a show of anger over the propaganda leaflets. Later that year, South Korea legislated the Development of Inter-Korean Relations Act to stop the leafleting campaigns, about six months after Kim Yo-jong, the powerful sister of the North’s leader, threatened to scrap the 2018 no-hostility military pact with the South in protest of the leaflet campaign.

In a separate statement, KCNA on Wednesday lambasted visits to Seoul by top US officials as a “field inspection” by “war zealots”.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Wednesday arrived in Seoul for talks on North Korea, the defence alliance and regional issues, and US Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin plans to attend annual bilateral defence ministerial talks next week.

“The provocative behaviour of the United States brings up the impression of war zealots who have embarked on a field inspection for a second Korean War,” Kim Myong-chol, an international affairs critic from North Korea, said in a commentary by KCNA.

Blinken and Lloyd’s visits will bring about “new war clouds” in the Asia-Pacific region, the commentator said, stressing that it depends on Washington’s behaviour whether new geopolitical risks will form in the region.

Additional reporting by the Associated Press

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