Leaflets Balloons Prove Effective as Weapons of Economic, Political Warfare

It shows you the woeful condition of modern South Korea that some would show up to defend slavery and oppression from the non-violent propagation of truth to the oppressed. I can understand why, to a man whose life has been stolen from him by that oppression, that proved to me more than he could bear. This is the point at which things ceased to be non-violent:

Here, encapsulated in one incident, is the ugly future of reunification. And the longer we delay it, the uglier it’s going to be.

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. [Washington Post, Blaine Harden]

The video above says that the counter-protestors were from South Korea’s left-leaning labor unions. Most likely, that means the quasi-terrorist and crypto-Stalinist Korean Confederation of Trade Unions. I suppose it’s obligatory for me to say here that two wrongs don’t make a right, so consider the obligation grudgingly discharged. Having done so, I confess to feeling about as much sympathy for a KCTU thug as I would for a hardball. It is now a demonstrated and incontestable fact that North Korea has considerable influence among the South Korean left. As I have documented extensively, the KCTU is itself an extremely violent organization with a history of violent strikes, trashing public property, beating up riot policemen and their mothers(!), and mobilizing hordes of goons armed with rocks, pipes, and poles, resulting in hundreds of arrests and injuries. Sometimes, it thinly disguises its allegiance to the North Korean regime, and sometimes, it does not:

Attending the May Day ceremony in Pyongyang on May 1, 2006, 50 confederation members paid tribute to the Revolutionary Martyrs Cemetery in Pyongyang, inviting heavy criticism in South Korea. Many South Koreans told them not to return and instead live in their “paradise” in the North. The confederation`s worship of communism did not stop there. In January last year, the group posted propagandistic lectures by professors from North Korea’s Kim Il Sung University on its homepage. Who wouldn`t call these people communist worshippers and the organization a playground for Kim Jong Il worshippers. [Donga Ilbo, Kwon Sun-taek]

What concerns me more is how this will play with the South Korean public — not very badly, I’d guess. My observation about the Korean Street is that it tends to sympathize with whichever side seems more strident and confident of its righteousness. I hope the defectors won’t get too far out of hand, but I also hope they’ll use this opportunity to humiliate the North Korean regime’s Fifth Column in the South. Two words: pig blood.

I’m glad to report that a subsequent balloon launch went off without a hitch.

Ten members of Family Assembly Abducted to North Korea and Fighters for Free North Korea floated 10 large balloons carrying 100,000 propaganda leaflets from the Bridge of Freedom at Imjingak Park in Paju, Gyeonggi Province. Attached to the leaflets were 1,000 US$1 bills. [Chosun Ilbo]

I’m even happier to report that this is forcing the regime to mobilize soldiers, burn fuel, and use up spare parts:

North Korea has mobilized soldiers in a campaign to sweep up propaganda leaflets from South Korean activists, which are dropped in large quantities on the coastal areas in South Hwanghae Province, Radio Free Asia on Tuesday quoted North Korean sources in China as saying.

Soldiers collect them in the morning, the broadcaster claimed. Those in charge of food rationing pay more attention to the leaflets. Harsher punishment has reportedly been given to North Koreans who have either kept or read them. It claimed one farmer was interrogated by a state security office and sent to a camp for eight years of labor and indoctrination for having told his neighbors that he had read a leaflet. [Chosun Ilbo]

This can’t fail to have an adverse impact on the North Korean army’s readiness.

The regime would also send soldiers and police to try to pick up every smuggled item. Let them. This leads us to the most interesting part of the analysis. Could North Korea’s road-bound, mechanized army and all of its antiquated vehicles effectively keep the countryside free of radios, leaflets, and other contraband? How would this impact the nation’s infrastructure? Would it force the army to send its personnel away from their guns and tanks along the DMZ? Would it force the North Koreans to disperse their forces? Would it loosen the regime’s control in the cities? Would it force the cancellation of military training exercises? Would it strain ageing equipment and lead to a maintenance fiasco? Would it, in effect, keep the regime perpetually off-balance as its army tried to cover vast areas of mountainous countryside, its navy tried to protect two long coasts, and its air force tried to stop thousands of inexpensive balloons and UAVs from penetrating its airspace? [Me, way back in 2004]

Contrast the behavior of the South Korean left, which spent billions of dollars to subsidize North Korea’s military and nuclear weapons development, with this comparatively small degradation in North Korea’s military capability. Really, who has made another Korean War more likely?

The regime’s inspections, searching for these leaflets and this currency, may also widen divisions between the military and the population. I still see no down side to any of this and plenty of reasons to support it enthusiastically. If you want to help support the balloon launches, please join me in contributing to the North Korean Freedom Coalition, which will also hold a protest rally in Washington this weekend (pdf of flyer in English and Korean).

[Photo from , which I highly recommend.]