Over 1,500 reports of N. Korea's trash balloons submitted this year

South Korean authorities have received 1,567 reports of trash-carrying balloons sent by North Korea this year, according to National Fire Agency data revealed Thursday.

Over 10,000 firefighters and 2,400 fire engines have been dispatched to deal with the totalitarian communist state's balloons from Jan. 1 to Aug. 13, according to the NFA data submitted to Rep. Yang Bu-nam of the main opposition Democratic Party of Korea.

Amid the currently icy inter-Korean relations, North Korea has been floating balloons filled with waste over the border to South Korea since late May. It has been sending the balloons in response to balloons carrying anti-Pyongyang leaflets sent north over the border by North Korean defectors' groups based in South Korea.

"Reports of North Korea's trash-carrying balloons have been received not only in the areas like the capital region, which is close to (North Korea), but also in other regions, disrupting the daily lives of the people. The government must come up with practical measures, such as stopping the anti-Pyongyang leaflets from being sent," Yang said.

Yang's report showed that 71.9 percent of the reports -- 1,126 -- submitted to the 119 emergency service hotline were from Seoul, the nation's capital which sits 23 kilometers away from the southernmost part of the Military Demarcation Line dividing the two Koreas.

Residents living in the northern part of Gyeonggi Province -- which surrounds Seoul and includes regions closest to the border -- reported 162 cases of trash-carrying balloons, while those in the southern part of the province reported 151 cases. Incheon, Gangwon Province and North Chungcheong Provinces reported 56 cases, 48 and 16 cases, respectively.

While most of the balloons fell in the regions close to North Korea, a few of them fell in southern regions as well, as residents of the southeastern city of Ulsan, North Gyeongsang Province and southwestern South Jeolla Province reported 1, 4 and 2 cases of waste-carrying balloons, respectively.

Authorities in a town in Yeongyang-gun, North Gyeongsang Province, 216 kilometers from the inter-Korean border, received a report of a North Korea-sent balloon on June 2.