It wasn’t just photos of dazzling Seoul skyscrapers and luxurious Samsung watches: There was a time when South Korean propaganda leaflets -- designed to make North Korean soldiers envy their capitalist neighbor -- featured smiling, bikini-clad women to entice potential defectors. “Come to the land of affluence and freedom,” one leaflet says, and you can “love me with a burning passion.”

With South Korea’s so-called “anti-leaflet law” set to take effect at the end of March, recent attempts by human rights activists to send information across the border have received a level of scrutiny rarely seen before. But the history of such leaflets goes way back.