Threatening letter, powder sent to South Korea minister

 South Korea Defense Minister Kim Kwan-jin (right) AP FILE PHOTO

SEOUL — South Korea’s defense minister on Tuesday received a package containing a threatening letter and some suspicious powder which was later found to be flour, his spokesman said.

The parcel was delivered days after hundreds of threatening leaflets were found scattered outside Defense Minister Kim Kwan-Jin’s office.

The leaflets condemned Kim for his perceived hardline stance against North Korea, which has made the minister a focus of Pyongyang’s more vitriolic propaganda attacks on the South.

“The parcel contained flour, and we are now investigating who might have sent it,” a defense ministry spokesman told AFP, adding that Kim’s security detail had been strengthened in the meantime.

The Korean peninsula has been in a state of heightened military tension since the North carried out its third nuclear test in February.

Incensed by fresh UN sanctions and joint South Korea-US military exercises, Pyongyang has spent weeks issuing blistering threats of missile strikes and nuclear war.

Pictures recently released by the North’s official Korean Central News Agency showed military attack dogs tearing at a mannequin masked with a photograph of the minister’s face.