S. Korea activists launch anti-North leaflets

SEOUL–A group of anti-North Korea activists in Seoul on Sunday launched leaflets that criticized the North’s new leader and urged its people to rise up against the communist regime, a group leader said.

About 70 activists floated large gas-filled balloons carrying some 50,000 leaflets and instant noodles after an anti-Pyngyang rally at Imjingak, a tourist site near the border north of Seoul, said Choi Woo-Won.

The leaflets contained photos of former leaders such as ex-Romanian strongman Nicolae Ceausescu, Iraq’s Saddam Hussein and Libya’s Moamer Kadhafi when they were being executed or killed by rebels, he said.

“We want North Korean people to know that dictators in other parts of the world faced miserable deaths, and that they should also rise up against the repressive Kim dynasty,” Choi told AFP.

The leaflets also called for North Korean people and soldiers to “exterminate the repressive, three-generation power transfer of the fat murderer family of Kim Il-Sung, Kim Jong-Il and Kim Jong-Un,” he said.

The Kim dynasty has ruled the impoverished, reclusive communist state with an iron fist for more than six decades.

Jong-Un, aged in his late 20s, was proclaimed the “great successor” after his father and longtime leader Kim Jong-Il died on December 17.

The senior Kim himself took over from his father and founding president, Kim Il-Sung, after his death in 1994.

South Korean activists have regularly sent leaflets over the border lambasting the ruling Kim dynasty or carrying news of the popular uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa in the past year.

The North, which tightly controls news from outside, has threatened to fire across the heavily fortified border to stop the launches.