N. Korea sends protest letter over propaganda leaflets

North Korea sent a protest letter to South Korea's presidential office demanding measures to stop the cross-border spread of anti-Pyongyang leaflets by civic groups in the South, the Unification Ministry said Tuesday.

The North's National Defense Commission (NDC), chaired by the country's top leader, Kim Jong-un, delivered two fax messages to Cheong Wa Dae's National Security Council on Saturday and Monday, respectively, the ministry said.

It is unusual for the North's commission to deliver messages directly to Cheong Wa Dae.

In the letters, the North urged the South to block activists from floating balloons containing propaganda leaflets into the North, a ministry official said, requesting anonymity.

It set a resolution to the problem as a precondition for high-level talks that the South has proposed, he added.

In response, Cheong Wa Dae made it clear that the North should accept the dialogue offer immediately without attaching conditions, the official said on background.

North Korea has shown an extremely negative response to the anti-Pyongyang leaflet campaign that has been waged by South Korean civic activists for years. South Korea's official position is that it has no control of its people's actions, as they have freedom of expression under its constitution. (Yonhap)