North Korean President Kim Jong Un was so furious at his wife’s “dirty and insulting” depictions in a deserter-initiated leaflet campaign against Pyongyang in South Korea that a liaison office with Seoul exploded and threatened to Take military action, according to a report Monday.
The brochures, carried over the highly militarized border by balloons, are a propaganda tactic that the two countries have used since the Korean War.
But pamphlets that reached the border on May 31 that included provocative images of First Lady Ri Sol Ju sparked “serious outrage” in Pyongyang, the France-Presse agency reported, citing comments made by the Russian ambassador to North Korea, Alexander Matsegora.
“The brochures contained a special type of dirty and insulting propaganda, directed at the leader’s spouse,” Matsegora told the Russian media outlet TASS.
He said they were painted with Photoshop “in such a low way” that they became the “drop that filled the glass” for the Hermit Kingdom.
The liaison office in Kaesong, just north of the border, exploded on June 16, days after Kim’s sister, Kim Yo Jong, warned “of a tragic scene of the useless joint North-South liaison office that completely collapsed. “
The next day, Pyongyang announced that it would resume military exercises, increase readiness in border cities, and reestablish guard posts, its most provocative actions on the peninsula since it signed an agreement with the South to reduce tensions in 2018.
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