Anchor: Amid rising cross-border tensions over anti-Pyongyang leaflet campaigns in South Korea, a defector group claimed it secretly sent over the border a fresh batch of propaganda materials Monday night. The group is widely expected to face criminal charges for their activity.
Choi You Sun reports.

Report: Defector-led Fighters for a Free North Korea and its chief Park Sang-hak announced on Tuesday that they released balloons carrying anti-Pyongyang leaflets from Gyeonggi Province’s border city of Paju the night before.

Park said they sent some 500-thousand leaflets, two-thousand one-dollar bills and one-thousand memory cards attached to 20 large balloons from 11:00 p.m. until midnight.

This comes as the government has vowed to crack down on the leaflet campaigns after North Korea threatened retaliation.

Pyongyang has severed communication with Seoul, demolished the Gaeseong inter-Korean liaison office and warned it would also send anti-Seoul leaflets across the border.

According to police in Hongcheon, Gangwon Province on Tuesday, a two to three-meter-tall plastic balloon carrying photos of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, his powerful sister Kim Yo-jong and regime founder Kim Il-sung, was found in the county.

If the group's activity is confirmed, they are expected to be booked by the police, after Gyeonggi Province designated certain areas along the border as "danger zones" to ban entry of those involved in the leaflet campaigns.

Meanwhile, North Korea criticized the South Korean government and ruling party for saying its planned launch of anti-Seoul leaflets across the border would be a violation of the Panmunjeom summit declaration from April 2018.

The North's ruling party mouthpiece, the Rodong Sinmun paper, accused Seoul of violating the agreement first by engaging in war games with Washington and turning a blind eye to defector-led anti-Pyongyang leaflet campaigns in the South.
Choi You Sun, KBS World Radio News.