SEOUL, South Korea -- South Korea said Thursday that it planned to push new laws to ban activists from flying anti-Pyongyang leaflets over the border after North Korea threatened to end an inter-Korean military agreement reached in 2018 to reduce tensions if Seoul fails to prevent the protests.
The South's attempt to keep alive a faltering diplomacy will almost certainly trigger debates over freedom of speech in one of Asia's most vibrant democracies.
Sending balloons across the border has been a common activist tactic for years, but North Korea considers it an attack on its government. Defectors and other activists in recent weeks have used balloons to fly leaflets criticizing the North's authoritarian leader Kim Jong Un over his nuclear ambitions and dismal human rights record.
While Seoul has sometimes sent police officers to block such activities during sensitive times, it had resisted the North's calls to fully ban them, saying the activists were exercising their freedoms.
The shift followed remarks earlier in the morning from Kim's powerful sister, who threatened to end the military agreement and said the North could permanently close a liaison office and an inter-Korean factory park that have been major symbols of reconciliation.
In her statement released through state media, Kim Yo Jong called the defectors involved in the balloon launches "human scum" and "mongrel dogs" who betrayed their homeland and said it was "time to bring their owners to account," referring to the government in Seoul.
Yoh Sang-key, spokesman of South Korea's Unification Ministry, said the balloon campaigns were threatening the safety of residents living in the border area and that his government will push for legal changes to "fundamentally resolve tension-creating activities."
When asked whether the ministry would specifically express regret over the North's threat to abandon inter-Korean agreements, Yoh said: "we will substitute our evaluation [of the North Korean] statement with the announcement of the government position [on the issue]."
Park Sang-hak, head of Fighters for Free North Korea, a defectors organization that has sent leaflets across the border, said the group would continue to do so.
"We are no longer slaves of North Korea. We are citizens of a free South Korea with an obligation to speak the truth," Park said. He called the Unification Ministry a "spokesman for North Korea."
North Korea also lashed out at Washington on Thursday, comparing the United States to a setting sun being eclipsed by China.
In a statement carried by state media, North Korea also highlighted the unrest over the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis police custody.
"Demonstrators enraged by the extreme racists throng even to the White House," said the statement published by Rodong Sinmun, North Korea's main state-run newspaper. "This is the reality in the U.S. today. American liberalism and democracy put the cap of leftist on the demonstrators and threaten to unleash even dogs for suppression."
The statement, from an arm of the North's ruling Workers' Party, excoriated Mike Pompeo, the U.S. secretary of state, for criticizing the Communist Party of China during a televised interview Sunday. In the interview, Pompeo accused the Chinese party of being "intent upon the destruction of Western ideas, Western democracies, Western values."
The statement carried by Rodong Sinmun said Pompeo's remarks showed that "he is nervous over the plight of the U.S. on the downhill side" in relation to an ascendant by China.
Information for this article was contributed by Kim Tong-Hyung of The Associated Press; and by Choe Sang-Hun of The New York Times.
A Section on 06/05/2020