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In S. Korea, Clash Over Anti-Kim Jong Il Leaflets Turns Violent
Park Sang Hak, a North Korean defector, launches balloons bound for his homeland. They carry leaflets accusing North Korean leader Kim Jong Il of being a drinker of pricey wine, a seducer of other men's wives, a murderer, a slaveholder, a dictator and "the devil." The South Korean government says it wishes Park wouldn't rain all this aggravation on a heavily armed neighbor, but it says it is powerless to stop him. So about the only thing that usually stops Park's balloons is a wind that won't blow north. But on Tuesday morning here at Paju, near the demilitarized zone that separates the two Koreas, Park and his compatriots ran into a bunch of South Korean activists willing to fight to keep the balloons on the ground. Park's anti-Kim leaflets, they shouted, were a threat to peace on the Korean Peninsula. A balloon-driven rumble broke out. Scores of police struggled to keep it from turning into a full-blown riot. Before it was over, Park kicked one of the counter-protesters squarely in the head -- a blow that sounded like a bat whacking a hardball. He spat on several others who were trying to rip apart bags of leaflets. He pulled a tear-gas revolver from his jacket, and fired it into the air before police grabbed it away from him. In the end, Park's group managed to launch just one of their 10 balloons. Thousands of leaflets were torn from bags and spilled onto the ground. Ballooning in the Korean borderlands, it seems, has become a contact sport. Leaflets dropped this fall in the North have infuriated the government there, which is believed to be particularly sensitive to personal attacks aimed at Kim, owing to the stroke he reportedly suffered in August and the subsequent firestorm of speculation about his mental and physical competence. The leaflets have been an aggravating factor in the North's unusually belligerent behavior this fall toward the government of South Korea. Effective this week, the North drastically cut access for South Koreans working at the Kaesong industrial complex, located just north of the border. Posted by: Fred 2008-12-03 |
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