N. Korea repeats call for Seoul to block leaflet scattering

North Korea asked South Korea Saturday to halt the cross-border scattering of anti-Pyongyang propaganda leaflets, declaring that there would be no government-to-government dialogue to improve ties unless its demand is met.

The Rodong Sinmun, the North's main newspaper, claimed that the Seoul government is behind the leaflet campaign being waged by civic activists in the South. Separately, the North's Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Fatherland, a powerful party organization, took the same stand in a KCNA report, monitored in Seoul.

Inter-Korean relations have gone from bad to worse recently after North Korea last week called off a planned high-level government meeting, citing the leaflet campaign.

Activists in the South often send balloons with propaganda leaflets that condemn the autocratic North Korean regime, as well as U.S. dollar bills, attached across the border. The leaflets are mostly about the corruption and the abysmal human rights in the North.

The commentary came one day after a group of North Korean defectors sent such leaflets to the North in South Korea's northern city of Pocheon.

North Korea claimed that the practice is part of what it calls "hostile forces" of the United States' attempts to topple its regime, saying the Seoul government supports the activists behind the scenes.

"The scattering of leaflets is an act of war and if it continues to be carried out, there will be combats to crush such provocations," North Korea warned.

South Korean officials maintain that there is no legal basis to prohibit the campaign. When the activists flew anti-Pyongyang leaflets in mid-October, border guards of the two Koreas traded machine gun fire. Some North Korean rounds were later found to have landed near Paju, a South Korean border town. (Yonhap)