South Korean Court Overturns Law Banning Anti-Pyongyang Leaflets

North Korean activist Pang Sang-hak releases balloons carrying leaflets criticizing North Korea in 2011| Source: Flickr

South Korea’s Constitutional Court overturned a 2020 law banning anti-Pyongyang leaflets on September 26, citing an excessive restriction on free speech. Considering that all justices on South Korea’s Constitutional Court are presidentially appointed, this is the latest decision made under South Korean President Yoon Suk-Yeol’s conservative government, which advocates for a tougher stance on North Korea.

Under President Moon Jae-in’s more liberal administration that promoted greater inter-Korean relations, South Korea enacted the December 2020 law to establish a punishment of three years in prison or a 30 million won ($22,160) fine for disseminating anti-Pyongyang leaflets. North Korean defector activists had been floating leaflets across the border, packaged with U.S. dollar bills and USB drives containing world news, to criticize the North Korean government and raise awareness of its human rights abuses. For instance, Park Sang-hak, a North Korean defector, became a target of North Korea’s anger for supporting this form of leafleting.

Cross-border leafleting has historically stoked tensions in the Korean Peninsula. In June 2020, the North Korean government, notorious for banning outside news within the state, responded to cross-border leafleting by cutting off all communications with South Korea. A week later, North Korea demolished an inter-Korean liaison office that acted as a de facto embassy in Kaesong, a North Korean border town. A 2014 incident in which the North Korean military shot down protesters’ balloons with machine guns triggered North Korea’s detonation of the inter-Korean liaison office. After North Korean machine gun shells landed in South Korean territory, South Korea fired back with a series of forty bullets into the air. Although neither side reported casualties, this incident heightened tensions within the peninsula. It remains to be seen what effect this Constitutional Court ruling will have on inter-Korean relations; however, a potential increase in leafleting could once again heighten tensions in the peninsula.