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Refugee/defector groups in South Korea have been gearing up for the start of this year’s balloon launch season set to start tomorrow at 10:00 a.m. local time Saturday (or 8 pm Friday here in Washington) if weather permits. The effort is developing into high drama not only in North-South relations but in the South as well. Progressive groups have been planning a counter-protest to disrupt the launch with one group threatening physical violence if the launch proceeds. Another fracas pits the anti-Pyongyang groups against the regions from which the balloons will be launched—and where retaliation could fall—as well as the left. Residents of Munsan, just south of Imjingak from where the balloons will be launched, want the government to intervene.
Now the North Koreans are threatening live fire exercises in the vicinity.
Maybe we should put this on pay-per-view and get Dr. Ferdie Pacheco to do the color commentary.
The launch—spearheaded by defector Park Sang Hak among others-- will send 200,000 thin, plastic leaflets, hundreds of USB flash drives and DVDs into the North, and 1,000 $1 bills into the north. The flyers describe political developments in the Middle East, as well as the Cheonan and Yeonpyeong-do incidents. The DVDs show the grieving families of the 46 sailors killed on the Cheonan and images of the Kim dynasty in the crosshairs of a gun with the warning, “Be careful.”
The issue has become a political football in the South. Last month, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) admitted to lawmakers the full extent of their own involvement in these propaganda activities. Immediately following the shelling of Yeonpyeong Island in October the MND released 400,000 balloons, but followed up with another 2.4 million in February including messages dealing with the Middle East. The MND launches have included daily necessities such as toothpaste, soap, clothes and rice as well as radios. Even the president’s party seemed upset by the extent of these psyops, arguing that they should be handled by the government rather than the military.
The political content of the leaflets is not unsophisticated. For your information, reproduced below is an English translation of one of last year’s offerings courtesy of the Defense Forum Foundation’s Suzanne Scholte. Apparently it was the discussion of Kim Jong-il’s private life that sent the North Koreans into apoplexy.
OUR BELOVED FELLOW KOREANS IN THE NORTH!
OUR FELLOW NORTH KOREANS!
We are defectors from North Korea who found refuge in the Republic of Korea. Until recently, our life was close to that of a slave plagued with hunger and poverty and deprived of any human rights, a kind of life that you are going through right now.
We risked our lives and wept tears of blood as we crossed the Yalu River and the Tumen River to escape from a country where the world’s most vicious forms of surveillance, control, violence, poverty and starvation exist. When we arrived in our true fatherland, the Republic of Korea, where freedom, democracy and human rights prevail, we felt for the first time what it is like to be genuinely happy as a human being and to live like one.
As soon as you cross the Yalu and Tumen, any North Korean would realize who Kim Jong-il truly is; a notorious murderer who treats the people as slaves and squashes their lives as if they were something even less than a bug. Also, as soon as you witness how the Chinese people live, you will realize that all the suffering, poverty and hunger that the Chosun people have gone through are caused by Kim Jong-il and Kim Jong-il only.
To free our parents, brothers and sisters, relatives and friends in North Korea from evil Kim Jong-il and his inhumane military-first dictatorship, we formed “Chosun [North Korea] People Liberations Front” and “Fighters for Free Chosun [North Korea]” here in the Republic of Korea, the land of freedom.
The food shortage and economic difficulties that the North Korean people had to suffer are all caused by the inhumane hereditary military dictatorship championed by Kim Jong-il. By toppling the Kim Jong-il regime and dismantling the Worker’s Party, which is Kim Jong-il’s puppet party, and with reform and opening doors to the outside world by and for the people, the food problem can be solved and the North Korean people will have a decent life with freedom and human rights.
To this end, the first step should be understanding our true history, not the Kim Il-song and Kim Jong-il version that they distorted and fabricated, and the truth behind the so-called “military-first politics,” with which Kim Jong-il points gun barrels at the people, and the gap and disparities between the North and South.
The North Korean government was a puppet government established by the Soviet Union. On 20 September 1945, Joseph Stalin, the General Secretary of the Soviet Union, sent a top secret directive to the Supreme Commander of the Far Eastern Army and the Military Council of Primorsky Krai [Maritime Province], which was released to the public in 1993. In the letter, Stalin ordered a proletariat dictatorship regime disguised in the name of democracy be set up in North Korea.
THE TRUTH ABOUT THE KOREAN WAR
Kim Jong-il and the Worker’s Party claim that the Korean War was initiated by South Korea and the US, but in actuality it was Kim Il-song who invaded the South first.
In March 1949, a year and 3 months before the War, Kim Il-song visited Moscow and begged Stalin to back up his plan to communize the Korean peninsula.
Kim Il-song sent 48 secret messages to Stalin to get his approval and Stalin finally gave a green light to Kim Il-song’s plan to invade the South in early February 1950. Kim Il-song was back in Moscow in March 1950 to come up with detailed plans for the Korean War and put them into action on 25 June 1950.
This has been confirmed by written materials released by Russia (former Soviet Union) and the US. The Korean War started by Kim Il-song not only killed or injured as many as 5.2 million people and inflicted a great deal of damage on both sides, but also made the division permanent and thereby prevented the two Koreas from unifying.
The United Nations Command led by the US military, which defended the free and democratic Republic of Korea from aggressions of Kim Il-song, Mao Zedong and Stalin, is here today in South Korea to deter Kim Jong-il and his military-first regime’s aggression, not as an occupier or invader as portrayed by the Workers Party. They are the guardian of freedom and peace and blood allies of South Korea, whose contribution has made it possible for the Republic of Korea to become the great country that it is now.
WHY DID NORTH KOREA COLLAPSE?
Chosun collapsed because all the people and resources in North Korea were mobilized for the sake of only two people, Kim Il-song and Kim Jong-il. The two Kims pretended that they cared for the people by saying that “I am a son of the people” and “All is well as long as workers are happy,” but what they actually did was to exploit the blood and tears of the people only for their own good and wealth.
North Korean people’s hard-earned foreign currencies go directed to the Workers Party Room 39, which is a Kim Jong-il’s personal safe, and tens of millions of dollars are spent every year on food and daily supplies for Kim Jong-il and his family. Even when over three million people were dying of starvation, he brought chefs from Japan to have feasts and said “I don’t care if even 5 million people are dying. As long as we have the 3 million essential public officials and the military on our side, we can keep our socialism going.”
North Korea is the only country in the world whose constitution is named after an individual. In the “Kim Il-song Constitution,” the people of North Korea are stipulated as the slaves of Kim Il-song and [after his death] the master simply changed from Kim Il-song to Kim Jong-il.
On the contrary, South Korea stood strong against threats from the communists under the leadership of Presidents Lee Sung-man and Park Chung-hui and has become the world’s 12th largest economy with the Miracle of the Han through reform and opening up its doors since the 1960s.
Currently, South Korea’s national income per capita stands at USD 20,000 (that of North Korea is about USD 300) and the ratio of cars per person ratio is 1 to 2.7. Also, South Korea is the world’s biggest producer of ships, flat screen TVs, semiconductors, large vessel engines and sea water conversion facilities, and the 5th largest producer of steel and automobiles. South Korea also tops the list of computer penetration rate in the world and exports 330 billion dollars-worth of services and commodities (making it the 8th largest in the world in terms of export volume and 110 times more than that of North Korea) and generates 100 times more electricity than North Korea.
North Korea does not produce even a single item that is the world’s-best, but the South has as many as 120 items that are recognized as the world’s best.
South Korea has fostered a great number of talents who have earned global recognition in a variety of spectrums ranging from politics to economics to science and technology and to culture. In October 2006, Mr. Ban Ki-moon from South Korea became the Secretary General of the United Nations, a prestigious position that is regarded as the president of the world, demonstrating the unlimited power and resilience of the free democratic Republic of Korea.
HOW ABOUT NORTH KOREA?
More than 3 million people died of starvation, over half a million innocent people were executed in political prisoners’ camps and 300,000 defectors have become international orphans wandering around Northeast China and Southeast Asia. This is what is happening in a country which boasts itself to be strong and great with a mighty military and nuclear power under the blessing of a great leader who is worshiped as the Sun of the 21st century. In only 63 years since the division, South Koreans live 14 years longer and are 10cms taller and 13kgs heavier than their brothers and sisters in the North.
In other words, Kim Il-song and Kim Jong-il have turned you into the mentally and physically disabled, hunger-stricken orphans and a modern version of slavery. All these tragedies are caused by Kim Jong-il, no one else.
Therefore, the only way for the North Korean people to survive is to bring down Kim Jong-il who wields god-like absolute power under lies and hypocrisies. Kim Jong-il is not the Sun of the 21st Century, but the most vicious and inhumane dictator and murderer of the 21st Century.
Everything about Kim Jong-il that he claims to be are complete lies and frauds. He is a ruthless and notorious dictator who is suspected to have killed even his own father, Kim Il-song.
WHO IS KIM JONG-IL? THIS IS WHO HE REALLY IS.
Birth date: 16 Feb 1941 (Fabricated to 1942 to keep the same last digit as Kim Il-song’s birth year, which is 1902)
Birth place: Kim Jong-il was born in a Soviet Army field hospital near Khabarovsk, Primorsky Krai in Russia, not in a secret military camp in Mt. Paekdu.
Name: Yura (this was his name when he was born in Russia. When he graduated from Namsan Middle School, he told his classmates that he got his ID card issued with his Korean name Jong-il on it and asked them to call him by his Korean name from then on)
Siblings: There was a rumor that Kim Jong-il had an older sister (Kim Il-song’s eldest daughter), but this has not been verified. Kim Jong-il’s younger brother ‘Shura (phonetic)’ (Korean name was Man-il), born in 1944, was drowned in a pond in their house (currently used as the Worker’s Party Foundation Museum) while playing with Kim Jong-il. Kim Jong-il has a younger sister, Kim Kyung-hui (Jang Song-taek is her husband).
Wife: Kim Young-suk was his legitimate wife, but they got separated. In the late 1960s, Kim Jong-il lived with Song Hye-rim, who was already a married woman and featured as the main actress in a North Korean art movie “A Village near the MDL” and Kim Jong-nam was born. But, Song Hye-rim was deported to the Soviet Union where she died in 2002 when Kim Jong-il met Ko Young-hui, who appeared in a revolutionary dance performance “It is Snowing.” Ko Young-hui had two sons, Jong-chol and Jong-hun, and one daughter, Il-sun, before she died in 2004. Now, Kim Jong-il’s mistress is Kim Ok, his secretary in her mid 40s, and he has had a few dozen concubines so far.
How can the “people’s dear leader who is supposed to be noble, innocent, humble and merciful” do such horrific things?
Kim Jong-il spent 890 million US dollars on decorating his father Kim Il-song’s corpse. If this money had been spent on buying food for the people, those millions of people could have been saved. This is the true face of Kim Jong-il, who praises himself as the father of the people and the leader of the people.
How many statues, historic monuments, and historic halls has he built in North Korea to exaggerate his revolutionary achievements? The entire country is in darkness, but Kim Il-song and Kim Jong-il’s statues, mansions and summer houses are always lit up as bright as daylight. He indulges in drinking and singing at his mansions and summer houses with his beautiful comfort women and some of the world’s most expensive liquors from France and Italy at the expense of people’s blood and tears.
North Korea is the only country where people’s destiny to live or die is determined by [Kim Jong-il’s] single word!
North Korea is the only country where people starve to death!
North Korea is the only country where brutal political prisoners’ camps exist!
North Korea is the only country where the state sponsors such international crimes as currency counterfeiting and drug production!
North Korea is the only country where not just an individual who committed crime but his/her family members and relatives are punished as well for the crime they didn’t commit!
North Korea is the only country where freedom of religion is nonexistent!
North Korea is a living hell created by Kim Il-song and Kim Jong-il where social class matters more than a medieval country.
Our fellow Koreans! Freedom is not free.
Our fellow Koreans! Don’t sit idle and starve yourselves to death. Stand up for yourselves and fight against Kim Jong-il.
KPA soldiers! Please turn your gun barrels away from the people and point them at dictator Kim Jong-il.
Worker’s Party officials! Stop being loyal to ruthless murderer Kim Jong-il. Be loyal to the people and yourselves.
Freedom, democracy and human dignity can only be earned when you are willing to fight for them with your life. Let us all stand up in unison to overthrow the inhumane military dictatorship and liberate the North Korean people!
- Fighters for Free Chosun [North Korea],
Chosun [North Korea] People Liberations Front –
