Defectors try sending medicine across the border

North Korea

Published: 07 Jun. 2022, 16:00 Updated: 07 Jun. 2022, 16:56

Defectors try sending medicine across the border

Park Sang-hak, head of Fighters for a Free North Korea, an organization of North Korean defectors, holds balloons filled with medicine before launching them near the inter-Korean border in Pocheon, Gyeonggi, on Sunday. [FIGHTERS FOR A FREE NORTH KOREA]

A North Korean defector group sent masks, Tylenol and vitamin C supplements across the border to the North via balloons on Sunday, citing concerns about North Koreans "suffering in the recent spread of the Covid-19 pandemic.”

The flights will test the resolve of the new Yoon Suk-yeol administration, which inherited from the previous government a law outlawing such activities.

“We sent 20,000 masks, 15,000 Tylenol pills, and 30,000 vitamin C tablets in 20 large balloons from Pocheon, Gyeonggi, on June 5,” said Park Sang-hak, head of Fighters for a Free North Korea, an organization of North Korean defectors that is critical of the North Korean regime, on Tuesday.

The group released a video showing Park launching the balloons.

“Currently, in North Korea, medicines are very difficult to obtain, and members of the public are dying without proper care,” said the group in a statement. It said it intends to continue sending medicine to the North.

The Unification Ministry warned the group against such action on May 16, when it announced its plan.

“Please consider whether such a delivery method will actually help the North Korean people and whether it will help the South Korean government's policy to support the North’s efforts to respond to the pandemic,” said Cho Joong-hoon, spokesperson for the Unification Ministry, in a press briefing on May 16.

Sending anti-North Korea leaflets into the North has been banned since March 2021, when an amendment to the Development of Inter-Korean Relations Act went into effect.

The amendment imposes a fine of up to 30 million won ($23,800) and a jail term of up to three years for sending leaflets, USB sticks, Bible excerpts and money across the 38th parallel into North Korea via balloons.

Park is currently on trial for sending anti-Pyongyang leaflets across the inter-Korean border from Gyeonggi and Gangwon provinces in April 2021.

When an activist group dispatched leaflets by balloon from Yeoncheon County, Gyeonggi, on Oct. 10, 2014, the North Korean military responded by firing at the balloons, with a number of shells falling in a residential area on the South Korean side.

South Korea responded with rifle fire, escalating tension between the two countries. There were no casualties.

“Whether they’re sending leaflets or medicines, the risk is still there for residents of the border area,” said Lee Seok-woo, head of a civic group based in Yeoncheon.

North Korea admitted a Covid-19 outbreak in the country in May, and its state media reported that more than a million were affected.

Pyongyang seemed to have prevented a major Covid-19 outbreak before then by shutting its land borders with China, over which the bulk of the country’s trade is conducted.

The regime has not responded to offers from the outside world to help with things like vaccines, including from South Korea and the United States.

U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman, visiting Seoul on Tuesday to meet with her counterpart First Vice Foreign Minister Cho Hyun-dong, addressed the issue in a meeting with the press.

“We hope, of course, that North Korea will attend to its internal issues,” she said at the Foreign Ministry headquarters in Seoul. “Kim Jong-un has announced publicly that there has been a very strong Covid outbreak in North Korea, we feel for the North Korean people, the ROK [Republic of Korea], the United States and others have offered humanitarian response that has yet to be accepted.”

BY JEON ICK-JIN, ESTHER CHUNG [chung.juhee@joongang.co.kr]