The DMZ as a site of protest. A North Korean refugee attempted to launch balloons filled with leaflets denouncing Kim Jong Il. There were counter-protesters, and it got a little violent. But most of the violence seems to have been initiated by the leafletter.
I guess if i was a North Korean, fed a steady diet of Kim Jong Il worship my whole life, and later found what a repressive buffoon he actually was, then I’d be pissed off too. Desperate, even, to tell all the other North Koreans still stuck there, about the truth.
However, there’s no excuse for kicking people on the head, or threatening to shoot tear gas. Here’s some of the article from the Washington Post.
PAJU, South Korea, Dec. 2 — 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 provocation 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.
