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| ▲ This photo, provided by the Fighters for a Free North Korea, a North Korean defectors' group, on June 21, 2024, shows its members sending balloons carrying anti-Pyongyang leaflets to North Korea in the South Korean border city of Paju the previous day. (PHOTO NOT FOR SALE) (Yonhap) |
unification ministry-2025 policy plans
Unification ministry to prioritize stable security management on Korean Peninsula in 2025
SEOUL, Jan. 16 (Yonhap) -- The unification ministry plans to prioritize stable security management on the Korean Peninsula this year, including carefully addressing activists' launch of propaganda leaflets into North Korea, officials said Thursday.
The ministry reported the plan to acting President Choi Sang-mok as part of its 2025 policy direction, as South Korea is under Choi's interim leadership following the impeachment of President Yoon Suk Yeol over his short-lived imposition of martial law last month.
The government "is placing its top priority on stably managing the situation on the Korean Peninsula, considering the fluid and uncertain external and internal conditions," a ministry official told reporters ahead of the policy report to Choi.
The new policy stance, aimed at deterring inter-Korean tensions, represents a step back from the ministry's policy report to Yoon last year, which focused on, among other things, inducing changes in North Korea and increasing its people's access to outside information.
As part of the new stance, the ministry requested activists last month to exercise caution regarding their launch of propaganda leaflets into North Korea. A ministry official said that no activist groups have been found planning leaflet campaigns against North Korea since then.
Propaganda leaflets, launched by activists into North Korea in big plastic balloons attached with gifts, such as dollar bills or UBS sticks containing outside news, have often been a source of tension between the two Koreas.
This year, the ministry will also maintain its general ban on private groups' exchanges with North Korean entities, except on exceptional occasions, officials also said.
Last year, the ministry effectively adopted a general ban on private-level inter-Korean exchanges, citing inter-Korean tensions, in alignment with Yoon's North Korea policy, though it briefly allowed such exchanges to provide flood-related assistance to the North in the summer.
The ministry predicted that North Korea may further attempt to fracture inter-Korean relations, in line with leader Kim Jong-un's declaration of the two Koreas as "hostile to each other," while also increasing nuclear and military threats and provocations.
In principle, however, Seoul will remain open to opportunities for dialogue with Pyongyang, the ministry said.
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