South Korean activists reply to North’s trash balloons with Okay-pop

Launched after midnight from Pocheon, a metropolis about 30 miles northeast of Seoul, the balloons additionally carried 200,000 leaflets criticizing North Korean chief Kim Jong Un, in addition to 2,000 U.S. $1 payments, in line with an announcement from the Fighters for Free North Korea (FFNK) group, which is led by North Korean defector Park Sang-hak.

In an announcement, FFNK accused North Korea of “indiscriminately dropping” 15 tons of waste on the South by way of balloons, calling it “a show of insult and embarrassment for our 50 million residents.” The South Korean army stated that the balloons have been “clear violations of worldwide legislation and severely threaten the protection of our residents.”

Activists from the South have for years despatched balloons over the border and floated bottles up the river in an try to succeed in the individuals in North Korea with leaflets, media and even Choco Pies — whereas Pyongyang has responded a minimum of twice with airborne trash. The South briefly banned sending propaganda leaflets to the North, however the legislation was struck down final 12 months.

“We despatched them reality and truth, love and drugs — and greenback payments, dramas and trot songs,” FFNK stated Thursday of their assertion, including that Kim “has not stated a single phrase of apology” and accusing him of “unprecedented evils.”

FFNK despatched 20 balloons with related contents on Could 10, in line with a press launch on its web site, sparking the newest tit-for-tat balloon launches.

Activists admit it isn’t clear what number of — if any — of the balloons and bottles truly attain their vacation spot, not to mention affect the pondering of unusual North Koreans.

John Lie, a sociologist at College of California at Berkeley, who has written in regards to the historical past of Okay-pop, attributed the group’s latest actions partially to the assumption that earlier balloons have been profitable, “a minimum of gauged by the truth that North Korean authorities are responding to what they think about to be ‘trash’ with their trash,” he wrote in an electronic mail.

In recent times, South Korean tradition has flourished globally, with Okay-pop teams promoting out stadiums, Okay-dramas dominating streaming platforms, and Okay-beauty and Okay-fashion industries booming. However consuming international media is an offense in North Korea, and in 2020, Pyongyang adopted a legislation particularly cracking down on Okay-pop and different South Korean cultural content material, media within the South reported.

Freedom Home, a Washington-based pro-democracy suppose tank and watchdog, provides North Korea a 3 out of 100 ranking for civil liberties and political rights.

Relations between the 2 international locations — which by no means formally signed a peace treaty after a 1953 armistice ended hostilities within the Korean Warfare — have been particularly turbulent in latest months, with Kim earlier this 12 months formally abandoning the thought of peaceable reunification with the South, The Washington Submit reported.

And balloons stuffed with South Korean tradition would possibly solely serve to focus on that division.

“Okay-dramas have hooked some North Korean viewers and mission the picture of rich, profitable South Korea” in contrast with the North, Lie stated, whereas “popular culture can have a subversive impact on authoritarian” regimes, sparking crackdowns, equivalent to with jazz within the Soviet Union, he added.

For many South Koreans, Okay-culture “shouldn’t be solely nice in and of itself,” Lie stated, “however can also be a worldwide model: probably the most potent expression of South Korean coolness and greatness.”