DP leader calls for urgent inter-Korean talks on balloons, leafleting

SEOUL, Opposition leader Lee Jae-myung on Tuesday proposed the two Koreas hold talks to ease the escalating tensions over Pyongyang's trash-carrying balloon campaign. Lee made the remarks during an "emergency task force meeting on crisis management of the Korean Peninsula" at the National Assembly, stressing that propaganda leaflet campaigns by North Korean defectors in South Korea is a "violation of the current law." "The damage inflicted on residents in the border regions is snowballing," he said. "If we insist on responding with a hard-line stance of 'an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth' the damage will go straight to our own people." Lee then proposed the two Koreas consider holding talks to help ease the tensions. Tensions have recently heightened on the Korean Peninsula after Pyongyang sent nearly 1,000 balloons carrying trash to the South since late May in what it called a "tit-for-tat" action against anti-Pyongyang leafleting. The move eventually led South Korea to fully suspend a 2018 inter- Korean tension reduction pact and resume propaganda loudspeaker broadcasts near the border for the first time in six years. Defector groups in the South have sent balloons carrying leaflets and other goods across the border although such acts are banned in the country under a law that was legislated during the previous administration to help reduce tensions in the border regions. Source: Yonhap News Agency