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SEOUL: A South Korean activist group said Thursday it will resume sending anti-North Korean leaflets across the border, a move likely to fuel Pyongyang's protests against the Seoul government.
Choi Sung-Yong, who heads a group campaigning for the return of South Koreans abducted by the North, said the launch of gas-filled balloons carrying the leaflets would resume in January.
Choi's group and another one involved in the campaign announced on December 5 they would suspend the launches, as the Seoul government had requested, to give the North a chance to change its attitude.
"Neither the North nor the South Korean government appear willing to actively solve the issue of South Korean abductees," Choi was quoted by Yonhap news agency as saying.
"The government no longer has the right to ask us to discontinue flying the leaflets."
About 300,000 leaflets have been printed and are ready to be sent early next month, Choi said.
The Seoul government says 494 South Koreans -- mostly fishermen -- were seized by the North during the Cold War, and more than 500 prisoners of war were never sent home at the end of the 1950-53 conflict.
A group representing North Korean Christians, which did not suspend operations, last week said it flew 1.5 million leaflets into the communist state.
Inter-Korean relations began to worsen after conservative South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak took office in February. He rolled back his liberal predecessors' engagement policy and linked major economic assistance to the North to progress in denuclearisation.
The leaflet launches have further fuelled tensions.
On December 1 the North expelled hundreds of South Korean workers from the Kaesong joint industrial estate and imposed strict border controls.
On December 18 Pyongyang said it had thwarted a "terrorist mission" mounted against its leader Kim Jong-Il, under orders from a South Korean intelligence agency -- an allegation denied by Seoul.
On December 23 North Korea accused the South of trying to provoke another war and threatened to turn its neighbour into "a sea of fire" in response to any attack.
- AFP/yt
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