March 11, 2011
SEOUL (AFP) - South Korean police were Friday investigating the murder of the mother of an activist opposed to North Korea, an incident which prompted the suspension of a leaflet launch into the communist state.
Police said the 75-year-old woman surnamed Han was found dead with head injuries on Thursday afternoon, on the floor of a small store which she ran in northern Seoul.
Lee Byoung-Woo, chief detective at Gangbuk district police station, said they are treating the case as murder but have no suspects yet.
"We cannot confirm anything about the possibility of North Korea's involvement," Lee told AFP in answer to a question, adding that nothing was stolen from the store.
Han was the mother of Chu Sun-Hee, one of a group of activists intending to launch tens of thousands of anti-regime leaflets into the North on Saturday.
Pyongyang has threatened to open fire with artillery to disrupt such launches from Imjingak, a tourist area overlooking the closely guarded border.
Chu is a senior official of a group called the Korea Parent Federation.
"We're waiting for the results of the police investigation," federation chief Lee Hung-Woo told AFP.
"We hope police will launch a thorough investigation to see whether this is a simple homicide or whether North Korean agents or leftist groups were behind it."
Some left-leaning activists had vowed to try to block the leaflet launch, which they said would aggravate tensions with the North.
Park Sang-Hak, head of a defector group called Fighters for Free North Korea, said the launch had been suspended until after the funeral service.
"It's just a temporary suspension and we will send leaflets once the funeral has been finalised," he said.
Park's group and other activists had planned to launch 200,000 leaflets plus DVDs and USB flash drives, suspended under helium-filled balloons designed to float over border fences.
The leaflets and electronic devices were to contain news of the uprising in Libya -- a topic seen as especially sensitive in the North -- and other material critical of the regime.
