CINA

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Once again the 'DPR'K got worldwide attention with a new "message of love" for their brothers and sisters in the South:
  "The south Korean puppet regime had better bear in mind that the advanced pre-emptive strike of our own style will reduce everything opposed to the nation and reunification to debris, not just setting them on fire," a spokesman for the KPA was quoted by today's KCNA. Such a "pre-emptive strike", he said, would be "beyond imagination relying on striking means more powerful than a nuclear weapon."

Lovely, really!! And a f.. great idea!! ^^(*)

Related articles:
☞ North Korea ratchets up threats (al-Jazeera, 10.28)

N.K. tense over 'paper bombs'  (Korea Herald, 10.28)
 

A blimp filled to the brim with propaganda leaflets lifts off from a boat on the waters near Ganghwa Island, headed for North Korean soil.

South Korean propaganda pamphlets have been distributed like this at frequent intervals, most often by civic groups and organizations formed by North Korean refugees.

Such leaflets are nothing new for the two divided nations, who have distributed some 2 billion such documents during the 1950-53 Korean War.

The two Koreas agreed to completely stop the practice in 2004, but local civic groups remain committed to their distribution.

Possibly reflecting the delicate situation of the shaky Kim Jong-il regime, the North has become increasingly tense about the propaganda pamphlets, experts noted.

"For the North, the pamphlets are literally a 'paper bomb,' because the regime is suffering, and the leadership is desperate to keep away anything that is criticizing the government, not to mention the people who are all affected by the fallout of Kim Jong-il's illness and ensuing political troubles, and of course financial hardship," said Prof. Yang Moo-jin of the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul.

Pyongyang has requested two working-level military talks just this month after a nine-month hiatus, only to use both meetings as opportunities to grill Seoul about the propaganda pamphlets.

The North has even threatened to deny or limit access to the military demarcation line, and warned of negative impacts on the South Korean tours to Gaeseong City and the operation of the inter-Korean industrial complex there.

The North may decide to deliver on its threats, as it perceives blows to inter-Korean projects as the most effective way of lashing out at the South, Yang said.

Ties with Pyongyang remain strained amid a series of tit-for-tat moves from both Koreas after Seoul took a more hard-line stance toward its Northern neighbor.

Defense Ministry officials said the North Korean delegation brought boxes full of the pamphlets to the latest working level talks, demanding a correction.

The Seoul government has no legal means to stop the distribution by civic groups, but it hopes to establish related regulations on observation that the leaflets may damage what is left of the frayed inter-Korean relations.

Anti-North organizations, for their part, are on a mission to topple the Kim Jong-il regime, or at least educate their fellow people.

"We have no notion of stopping. We have been sending these leaflets up for years, and North Korea's recent responses only prove that they are indeed amid a crisis," said Park Sang-hak, head of the Fighters for Free North Korea.

The two Koreas have been sending leaflets and posters blasting each other for about half a century during and after the Armistice Agreement that tentatively ended the 1950-53 Korean War.

The North, however, has not sent them over the past few years, apparently concluding that Seoul and its people are no longer swayed by them.

As recent as the 1990s, Seoul was nervous about anti-South Korean pamphlets filtering in from the North, rewarding citizens who picked them up to hand them in to authorities.

But as capitalism and democracy began to take root, North Korean propaganda programs lost their charm.

The coming of Seoul's progressive governments, led by former presidents Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun further discouraged Pyongyang from resorting to such leaflets.

But that could all change, not only because the South is governed by a conservative administration, but also because the North is grappling with political and economic difficulties while the world watches to see how the regime might cope after Kim Jong-il's death, experts say.

PS:
Of course(!!) is N.K. not a state supporting or sponsoring terror, according to the US administration!! It only - from time to time - promises to turn S.K. (**) into a "bowl full with ash" or alternatively a "sea of blood".. But of course that has nothing to do with any kind of terror!!

* Sorry!

** Incl. the S.K. working class!!!