Seoul - Private groups in South Korea on Thursday sent balloons carrying tens of thousands of anti-North Korean leaflets over the border with their communist neighbour, flouting the wishes of the South Korean government. About 100,000 flyers were dispatched Thursday from a mountain near Seoul, the organizers said. Among the messages on the leaflets was a call for North Koreans to overthrow their Stalinist regime.
Similar flyers have sparked tensions this fall in inter-Korean relations as Pyongyang has accused the government in Seoul of being responsible for the leaflets and warned it repeatedly of serious consequences.
The release of the balloons was carried out despite an appeal Wednesday from the South Korean government for its organizers to stop the campaign. The government, however, has no legal basis to halt it.
Associations of North Korean immigrants and families of South Korean citizens who were kidnapped by North Korean agents participated in the release of the leaflets.
The flyers also contained demands for the release of the 487 South Koreans abducted by the North starting in 1969, said Choi Sung Yong, a representative of the families of the missing.
The release of the latest balloons followed North Korea's threat last week to close the inter-Korean border on December 1, accusing Seoul of pursuing a confrontational policy against its neighbour and failing to fulfill agreements made at the Korean summits in 2000 and 2007.
The communist state has recently stepped up verbal attacks against the South, repeatedly threatening to cut all ties. Relationships between the two Koreas have cooled markedly since a conservative government took office in Seoul in February, pledging to link inter-Korean economic cooperation with the North's nuclear disarmament.
The two countries remain officially at war after the 1950-53 Korean War ended with a truce and not a peace treaty.
