Five activists from the Fighters for a Free North Korea sent some 80,000 anti-Pyongyang leaflets from the cities of Gimpo and Paju, Gyeonggi Province, Saturday. / Yonhap



By Ko Dong-hwan

South Korea's civic group, Fighters for a Free North Korea, floated some 80,000 anti-Pyongyang leaflets across the inter-Korean border Saturday amid rising tensions sparked by the North's nuclear tests and missile launches.

Five members of the group said they have floated 30,000 leaflets from the city of Gimpo and 50,000 from Paju, Gyeonggi Province, in their bid to criticize the communist regime.

The civic group has regularly launched big balloons carrying such anti-Pyongyang leaflets in a campaign to spread messages within the reclusive country. The campaign has provoked the North in the past, which led to heightened inter-Korean tension.

The S. Korean government, despite the growing tension from the North over the leaflet campaign, has largely remained disinclined to mitigate the matter.

In recent weeks, the North carried out a series of missile launches in defiance of the U.N. resolution against them. The missile launches were also seen a gesture of discomfort by the North about the annual joint military exercises between the South and the U.S.