`Trash collaboration`

Something weird is happening as North and South Koreas are in conflict regarding anti-North Korea flyers. The North criticizes the defectors who are leading distribution of flyers as "human trash," and vows to launch individual attacks on leading members of the North Korean defector groups. As if collaborating to such attacks, South Korea’s biggest environmental activist group Korean Federation For Environmental Movement requested the police to crack down anti-North Korea flyer distribution, claiming that it is an act of "illegal trash dumping." It seems that the North Korean regime and the South Korean environmental activist group are now forming a "trash coalition" to stop distribution of anti-Pyongyang flyers.

North Korea released a so-called "Unification Research Institute White Paper" through Korean Central News Agency on Oct. 24. The white paper argued, “Distribution of flyers pushed ahead by the U.S. and South Korean puppets with some human trashes is an organized crime and intentional act to provoke a war.” The white paper mentioned real names of the defectors who are leading the flyer distribution and criticism against the North Korean regime, bashing, “As if it is not enough to betray and flee the homeland, they are now serving as raiders and buglers in the anti-North Korea scheme.”

Two days after the North launched the attack of ‘human trash,’ the South`s activist group reported to the National Police Agency that Park Sang-hak, the head of Fighters for Free North Korea, is engaged in "illegal trash dumping." The activist group said distributing printed flyers and bills in the air, which amounts to several tens of thousands up to hundreds of thousands papers, is an act of contamination onto the natural environment and living environment. Against this, conservative group National Action Campaign for Freedom and Democracy in Korea ran an opinion commercial in the Dong-A Ilbo and the Chosun Ilbo on Thursday, which was titled “You are the people who must be thrown to a trashcan of history.” The conservative group criticized, “The environment activist group is a political activist group under the mask of environmental group.”

Park Sang-hak hasn’t received any notification from the police as of Sunday. Seemed puzzled, Park said, “The activist group didn’t say a word to the North’s nuclear weapon testing and radioactive contamination. Now, is it pointing out trash dumping?” The police may be perplexed, too. It is an absurd idea to put an action to let North Koreans know the truth on the same level as trash dumping. It would be quite deplorable, if the environmental and life-saving activities have been based on such notions.