Activist group launches anti-North Korea leaflets despite threats

South Korean activists balloon-launched anti-Pyongyang leaflets into North Korea and threatened on Tuesday to follow them with copies of Hollywood comedy “The Interview,” despite the North’s dire threats of retaliation. The North has warned at least one activist that he would “pay for his crimes in blood” if copies of the movie about a CIA plot to assassinate North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un made it across the border. Activist Park Sang-Hak told local media that his group, Fighters for a Free North Korea (FFNK), had launched balloons with 100,000 leaflets on Monday night in an unpublicised operation near the border town of Paju. Copies of “The Interview” were “intentionally” excluded from the leaflet packages, Park said, but added that his group still had plans to send USB files and DVDs of the film at a later date. The South Korean government has tried to persuade the group and other activists to “make a wise decision” and hold off on sending the leaflets because doing so would inflame social discord in the South and potentially create security risks. In October last year, North Korea border guards attempted to shoot down some balloons, triggering a brief exchange of heavy machine gun fire between the two sides.

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