Park Sang-hak, who started an epic balloon battle, wants to avenge North Korea’s feces attack

North Korean defector and balloon-launching activist Park Sang-hak plans to avenge North Korea’s crap attack on South Korea, but says he would never stoop as low as they did.

“I will not respond to North Korea’s barbarism with barbarism,” Park told The Daily Beast when asked if he would shower the North with dung if it sent 200,000 balloons over North Korea in response to the North sending balloons filled with garbage, including excrement, over South Korea.

“Instead, we send them truth and love” – ​​he has printed this message on leaflets that he drops whenever the wind blows in a favorable manner so that the planes can land in populated areas. Presumably also on or near Kim Jong Un’s palace complex near the port city of Wonsan on the southeast coast of the North.

“The North Korean animals sent crap to South Korea,” Park said, “but we love the North Koreans.”

Park, who leads a group called Fighters for Free Korea, expressed his views in a wide-ranging Zoom conversation arranged and interpreted for The Daily Beast by U.S.-based Nam Sin-u. Nam has met frequently with Park in South Korea on behalf of the International Coalition for Human Rights in North Korea.

Park has been a devout Christian since fleeing North Korea 24 years ago. He said his response to the North’s fertilizer attack is, at least for now, in line with Bible teachings. “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 moderate response. How exactly is unclear, but South Korean Foreign Minister Yonhap Ness quoted an official as saying, “If North Korea does not stop its provocations, the government will take all measures that North Korea cannot tolerate.” Park does not believe the South is doing nearly enough, but conservative President Yoon Seok-yul is not stopping the balloon launches like his left-leaning predecessor Moon Jae-in, whom Yoon succeeded in 2022.

“The South Korean government does not want to make an enemy of North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un,” Park said. “He does not interfere in balloon launches, but he does not help either.”

Although South Korea under Yoon repealed a law banning balloon launches passed during the Moon administration, Park believes the government tried to silence him by sentencing him to six months in prison for participating in a protest against the demolition of a church to make way for a construction project.

Although the case had no direct connection to the balloon launches, Park believes there was a connection. “It was all politics,” he said. “I was innocent.”

Just three weeks after Park was released, he released 300,000 balloons – a barrage that apparently inspired the North to dispose of garbage laden with excrement.

“Excrement is the worst insult,” he said. “Koreans used to use human excrement as fertilizer.” American GIs called a container filled with it a “honey bucket,” he said – a historical memory that made matters worse.

However, Park does not change the basic theme of his balloon attacks, which he has been conducting for more than ten years. “All I can do is spread the truth about how terrible life is in North Korea to wake up the North Koreans.”

In addition to leaflets denouncing the evils of the Kim Dynasty, founded in 1945 by Kim Jong Un’s grandfather Kim Il Sung, the balloons will also contain USB sticks with popular K-pop songs and South Korean dramas, as well as chocolate bars and dollar bills.

“South Korean dramas are very popular in North Korea,” Park said. “North Koreans love them” – even though they are banned by the regime and anyone who watches or listens to them is severely punished.

Park attributes the North’s crap attack directly to Kim Jong Un, although his influential younger sister Kim Yo Jong may well have had a hand in it. Yo Jong, known for scathing remarks that clearly win big brother’s enthusiastic approval, promised “dozens more” such balloon launches as “honest gifts” to the South.

“Everything in North Korea comes from above,” Park said. “Yo Jong is a puppet.”

Park believes that South Koreans – like Americans and other foreigners – simply do not understand the extent of North Korea’s dictatorship.

He fears that South Koreans are not interested in what is happening in their own country, despite North Korea’s ongoing threats and missile tests.

“South Koreans are so comfortable that they only think about themselves,” he said. “They don’t worry about these shameful things. They enjoy life. They don’t express their anger at North Korea. I’m worried about their lack of response.”