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SKorea seeks to stop propaganda leaflets to NKorea

Other News Materials 19 November 2008 17:47 (UTC +04:00)

South Korean officials urged activists Wednesday to refrain from sending propaganda leaflets over the border into North Korea, reported AP.

But activists vowed to keep sending the flyers critical of North Korean leader Kim Jong Il into the North in huge balloons, despite the political tension the leaflets are causing between the two Koreas.

The two Koreas agreed in 2004 to end decades of propaganda warfare across the Demilitarized Zone dividing the neighbors.

North Korea, where leader Kim is the subject of a personality cult, accuses the South of violating the 2004 pact by allowing the leaflets, and has threatened to restrict traffic through the border starting next month in retaliation.

The South Korean government says it cannot stop activists and defectors from North Korea from sending the leaflets, citing freedom of speech. But officials urged activists to stop the leafletting campaigns, telling them they have a "negative impact on inter-Korean relations," according to Unification Ministry spokesman Kim Ho-nyeon.

Relations between the two Koreas have been tense since South Korean President Lee Myung-bak's conservative government took office in February pledging to get tough with Pyongyang.

Ties frayed further after a South Korean tourist was fatally shot by a North Korean soldier in July at the North's Diamond Mountain resort.

Kim said Seoul will continue to dissuade defectors from sending the leaflets, but he said the government has no plans to change South Korean laws or to punish those sending the leaflets.

Park Sang-hak, head of an anti-North Korean group and one of organizers of the leaflet campaigns, said he will send about 100,000 leaflets Thursday from a spot near the border with the North.

"We will continue to send the leaflets to the North without pause as long as the deaths of North Koreans under Kim Jong Il's tyranny continue," his group said in a statement posted on its Web site.

He said the latest batch of leaflets implore North Koreans to rise up against the autocratic leader, informing them he suffered a stroke and collapsed.

U.S. and South Korean officials say Kim, 66, suffered a stroke earlier this year but North Korea has denied the reports.

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