6 Americans Detained In South Korea For Trying To Send Rice, Bibles, Dollars To North

Authored by Katabella Roberts via The Epoch Times,

Six Americans were detained in South Korea on June 27 for allegedly attempting to send thousands of plastic bottles filled with rice, U.S. dollars, and Bibles to North Korea by sea, according to police.

The group had allegedly been trying to dispatch 1,300 bottles into the sea at a border island west of the South Korean capital, Seoul, toward North Korea when they were discovered by a military official patrolling the area, a police official at the Incheon Ganghwa Police Station said.

The U.S. citizens are suspected of violating the country’s disaster and safety law in an area that was recently designated a risk zone, meaning activities deemed harmful to residents are banned, the official said.

No charges have been announced against the individuals.

“We’re investigating them through an interpreter and will decide after 48 hours whether to release them or not,” the official said.

Ganghwa Island, where the group attempted to float the bottles, has been restricted to the public since it was designated a danger zone in November 2024, according to South Korea’s Yonhap news agency.

An administrative order banning launches of anti-North Korea leaflets is also in effect in the area, the news agency reported.

Korean defectors and activists in South Korea have previously sent inflatables across the border containing leaflets critical of the communist North and leader Kim Jong Un, along with food, medicine, money, and USB sticks loaded with K-pop music videos and other content.

Legislation passed in 2020 by South Korea’s previous government, which had pushed for closer engagement with Pyongyang, made it a criminal act for civilians to send leaflets and other items to the North.

The law made leafleting a crime punishable by up to three years in prison or a fine of 30 million won (about $22,000).

In 2023, South Korea’s Constitutional Court struck down the legislation, ruling it was an excessive restriction on free speech, but said the government still had the power to keep activists in check, including through police monitoring and intervention.

The latest arrests come as South Korean President Lee Jae-myung has sought to bolster relations with neighboring North Korea since taking office earlier in June, suspending loudspeaker broadcasts that had been directed at the North in response to its alleged weapons development.

Lee has also asked activists in the South to stop launching helium balloons containing leaflets and other materials critical of Pyongyang and its leader.

Last year, North Korea said it sent balloons full of trash and manure across the border, calling them “gifts of sincerity.”

As tensions flared between the two neighbors last year, the North Korean leader said his nation should “completely eliminate“ any notion of reunification or reconciliation with the South, which he called the ”primary enemy” of his country.

He also proposed rewriting the North’s constitution to state that it could pursue “occupying, subjugating and reclaiming South Korea” in the event of a war on the Korean Peninsula.

In response, then-South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol vowed to continue to maintain firm defense readiness while warning that the North Korean regime would be severely punished if it provoked South Korea.