North Korean defector and balloon-launching activist Park Sang-hak is planning to avenge North Korea’s manure attack on South Korea but says he would never stoop to match their lows.
“I will not react to North Korean barbarity with barbarity,” Park told The Daily Beast when asked if he would shower the North with manure when he sends 200,000 balloons over North Korea in response to the North sending balloons carrying garbage, including excrement, over South Korea.
“Instead we are sending them truth and love”—the message he’s printed on leaflets he’s launching whenever the winds are blowing the right way for them to land in populated areas—and also presumably on or near Kim Jong Un’s palatial complex near the port of Wonsan on the North’s southeastern coast.
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“The North Korean animals sent manure to South Korea,” said Park, “but we love the North Koreans.”
Park, in charge of a group called Fighters for Free Korea, expressed his views in a wide-ranging zoom conversation arranged and interpreted for The Daily Beast by Nam Sin-u, who lives in the U.S. Nam has frequently met Park in South Korea on behalf of the International Coalition for Human Rights in North Korea.
A devout Christian since escaping from North to South Korea 24 years ago, Park said he’s responding to the North’s manure attack in accordance with biblical teachings, at least for now. “Jesus said ‘turn the other cheek,’” he said, “but if there’s nothing else to do, we should kill them.”
Officially, South Korea is promising a somewhat more measured response. Just what is not clear, but the South’s Yonhap Ness quoted an official as saying, “If North Korea does not stop its provocative acts, the government will take all measures that North Korea cannot endure.” Park does not think the South is doing nearly enough, but the conservative President Yoon Seok-yul is not halting balloon launches as did his left-leaning predecessor Moon Jae-in, whom Yoon succeeded in 2022.
“The South Korean government does not want to antagonize the North Korean dictator, Kim Jong Un,” said Park. “He does not interfere with balloon launches, but he’s not helping either.”
Although South Korea under Yoon has rescinded a law passed during the Moon administration banning balloon launches, Park believes the government sought to shut him up by jailing him for six months for joining in a protest against demolishing a church to make way for a construction project.
The case was not directly linked to the balloon launches, but Park believes there was a connection. “It was all politics,” he said. “I was innocent.”
No sooner was Park freed three weeks ago than he organized the launch of 300,000 balloons—a barrage that appears to have inspired the North to respond with excrement-laden garbage.
“Excrement is the worst insult,” he said. “Koreans used to use human excrement as fertilizer.” American GI’s called a container filled with it “a honey bucket,” he said—an historical reminder that added more insult to injury.
Park, however, is not changing the basic theme of his balloon attacks, which he has been waging for more than 10 years. “All I can do is send the truth about how terrible life is in North Korea to awaken North Koreans.”
Along with leaflets exposing the evils of the Kim dynasty, founded by Kim Jong Un’s grandfather Kim Il Sung in 1945, the balloons will also contain flash drives with popular K-Pop songs and South Korean dramas, as well as candy bars and dollar bills
“South Korean drama is very popular in North Korea,” said Park. “North Koreans love it”—even though it is banned by the regime, which imposes harsh punishment on those caught watching or listening to any of it.
Park attributes the North’s manure attack directly to Kim Jong Un even though his influential younger sister, Kim Yo Jong, may well have had a hand in suggesting it. Yo Jong, noted for acerbic remarks that obviously have big brother’s enthusiastic approval, promised “dozens more” such balloon launches as “sincere presents” for the South.
“All things from North Korea come from the top,” said Park. “Yo Jong is a puppet.”
Park believes that South Koreans, as much as Americans and other foreigners, simply do not comprehend the depths of North Korean dictatorship.
He’s afraid that South Koreans don’t care about what’s happening inside North Korea despite persistent North Korean threats—and missile tests.
“South Koreans are doing so well, they think of nothing but themselves,” he said. “They are not concerned about these shameful things. They enjoy life. They do not voice anger towards North Korea. I am worried about their lack of response.”
