Anchor: North Korea heavily criticized defector-led anti-Pyongyang leaflet campaigns in the South, warning Seoul to brace for the complete shutdown of major inter-Korean projects and scrapping of reconciliatory agreements. Seoul, in response, said it is planning to introduce a ban on such tension-heightening activity.
Choi You Sun has the details.

Report: Kim Yo-jong, the powerful sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, slammed the sending of anti-Pyongyang leaflets into the communist state by North Korean defectors in the South.

In a statement in the ruling party mouthpiece Rodong Sinmun on Thursday, the deputy director of the party's central committee said Seoul must be aware that such hostile border activity violates past inter-Korean agreements.

Unless Seoul takes legal steps, Kim threatened to completely withdraw from the shuttered Gaeseong Industrial Complex, shut down the inter-Korean liaison office or abandon the 2018 cross-border deal to diffuse military tensions.

Kim specifically lambasted recent leaflet activity, in which a group of defectors flew hundreds of thousands of leaflets north of the border.

Hours later, South Korean Unification Ministry spokesperson Yoh Sang-key called for a halt to the leaflet campaigns.

[Sound bite: Yoh Sang-key, Unification Ministry Spokesperson (Korean)]
"The government has taken repeated steps to stop the leaflet distribution after it was found to have heightened cross-border tensions. Most of the leaflets are found south of the border and they worsen area residents' living conditions through pollution and creating a burden of waste collection. Any activity that threatens inter-Korean quarantine cooperation and the lives and property of residents must be stopped."

Yoh added that the ministry is planning to legislate a ban on the campaigns.

A South Korean presidential official stressed that the existing inter-Korean agreements signed during a series of summits in 2018 should be fulfilled.
Choi You Sun, KBS World Radio News.

[Photo : YONHAP News]