by REERA YOO | @reeraboo
editor@charactermedia.com
A South Korean activist group led by a North Korean defector vowed on Tuesday to send Pyongyang a massive number of DVDs of The Interview via balloons if it fails to respond to the South’s call for dialogue, reports Reuters.
Park Sang-hak, head of the Fighters for a Free North Korea (FFNK), said his group had secretly launched about 100,000 leaflets across the border on Monday, but no copies of the Seth Rogen comedy were included despite its previous decision to do so.
The launch comes after South Korean President Park Geun-hye renewed calls for high-level dialogue with North Korea last week and Seoul repeatedly requested the group to leaflet scattering.
According to Reuters, Pyongyang had claimed that the leaflets were damaging chances of holding inter-Korean talks and threatened military action if South Korea continued to allow protest balloons to be launched. This is no empty threat as North and South Korea have previously exchanged fire across the land border after protest balloons were launched from the South.
Despite this, the FFNK gave Pyongyang a deadline of Feb. 18 to respond to South Korea’s call for a meeting. If the communist state does not answer by Lunar New Year’s Day, the group said it will send North Korea about 100,000 DVD and USB copies of The Interview, which portrays the fictional assassination of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.
Back in November, the U.S. directly accused North Korea of hacking Sony Pictures. While North Korea has described the accusation as “groundless,” the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) told the New York Times on Sunday that it had penetrated North Korea’s computer networks in 2010, an effort that ultimately helped provide enough evidence to prove Pyongyang’s guilt.
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Photo courtesy of Reuters
