Balloon-Borne Messages to North Korea Have Detractors on Both Sides of Border

 

IMJINGAK, SOUTH KOREA — On a pleasant spring day, with the wind breezing up from the south, the quirky little tourist outpost of Imjingak — with its Peace Land amusement park, some souvenir sheds and a Popeye’s chicken stand — hardly seemed like a possible flash point for violent hostilities between North and South Korea.

Imjingak, the site of a ferocious battle during the Korean War, has become a favored launching site for some of the South Korean activists who send propaganda balloons northward. The balloon campaign has so angered North Korea that its military has threatened — as recently as last Friday — to “mercilessly” shell Imjingak and other border towns if the launchings continue. North Korean artillery units are dug in a few kilometers away, just across the world’s most heavily militarized border.

It is flying season now, with robust winds blowing through the Korean Peninsula, and the activists are eager to get their balloons and leaflets in the air. Some of the balloonists are political agitators, others are Christian proselytizers, most are North Korean defectors. If the wind is at their backs, they say, millions of leaflets will be sent aloft in the coming weeks.

“North Korea has said they would fire surgical strikes at those of us sending up balloons, so this highly allergic reaction clearly shows what we’re doing is working,” said Park Sang-hak, 43, the son of a former North Korean spy who defected along with his family in 1999.

Mr. Park now heads Fighters for a Free North Korea, a human rights group in Seoul that has become the most aggressive balloon-launching outfit in the South.

Mr. Park and other balloonists do have their domestic political opponents, principally the organizations that seek a return to South Korea’s so-called sunshine policy, which favors a conciliatory approach to the North. Some of these groups occasionally try to sabotage the showier balloon events, and Mr. Park, who has had 24-hour police protection since 2008, once fired a tear gas pistol during a violent melee at Imjingak.

“We get threats against him quite often now,” said a plainclothes police officer who was guarding Mr. Park before a recent launching.

For much of the previous decade, the South Korean government tried to block the balloon launchings, which pushed the activists to work clandestinely. But the policy changed dramatically in the spring of last year after the sinking of a South Korean warship, the Cheonan, and the deaths of 46 sailors. The South has blamed a North Korean torpedo attack; the North says it was not involved.

“Previously we tried to persuade the balloon guys not to do anything because it badly affected inter-Korean relations,” said a senior official in the Unification Ministry, speaking anonymously because he was not authorized to comment publicly on the matter. “But after the Cheonan, our position changed,” the official said. “We don’t block them now. It’s a matter we leave to the local police.”

Police officials have allowed the balloon launchings to continue at Imjingak — no special permit is necessary — and they intervene only if there is violence.

Mr. Park, an engaging and energetic man, honed his technique alongside Lee Min-bok, an evangelical Christian and the other leading figure in the balloon campaign. Beginning in 2003, looking for a way to poke the North Korean regime, they started out by tying a few handwritten leaflets to some tiny children’s balloons bought at a party store.

Once devoted colleagues, the men are now bitter rivals.

“I’m the original,” said Mr. Lee, who had been an agricultural scientist in North Korea. He said he fled in 1995 after his suggestions about economic reforms were not well received by his superiors.

His operation is financed by donations from churches and conservative Christians. He said he launched 1,500 balloons a year and accounted for 90 percent of all propaganda leaflets being sent into the North, about 250 million so far.

Mr. Lee, who uses various covert launching sites along the border, ridiculed Mr. Park’s launchings at Imjingak as little more than publicity stunts. He said the wind conditions were so unfavorable that Mr. Park’s balloons often ended up floating back into South Korea.

Mr. Park, for his part, called Mr. Lee “a Christian zealot” who was voted out of their secular group several years ago because he wanted to emphasize religion in their leaflets.