KIM WARNING
North Korea vows ‘retribution’ as it prepares to drop 12million propaganda leaflets on South amid escalating tensions
NORTH Korea has said it will get "retribution" and carry out its threat to bombard the South with millions of propaganda leaflets.
The reclusive communist country described an inter-Korean agreement signed in 2018 that bans such activity "a dead document,” as tensions continue to grow.
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Pyongyang has previously stated it intended to flood its neighbour with 12million propaganda leaflets.
Seoul has claimed many of the pamphlets could be air-dropped into its country.
Already strained relations between the two were heightened when the North blew up a joint liaison office and threatened military action over defectors in the South sending anti-North leaflets over the border.
Earlier this week, Kim Jong-un's regime reportedly sent soldiers to empty guard posts inside the heavily fortified Demilitarised Zone (DMZ).
In response the South also sent its troops close to the border and mobilised its air defences.
North Korea defectors had been flying balloons containing leaflets, cash, USB drives and SD cards into the rogue state.
South Korean authorities had attempted to crack down on the practice, but campaigners vowed to continue.
Pictures have emerged from North Korea’s state-owned media outlet Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) of people preparing the propaganda leaflets at an undisclosed location.
Seoul's Unification Ministry handling cross-border affairs on Saturday urged the plan to be scrapped citing a violation of peace agreements.
The United Front Department of the North's ruling party, in charge of inter-Korean affairs, rejected the ministry's calls as an "absurd nonsense."
"Given their own wrongdoings, how dare they utter such words as regret and violation?" the department's spokesman said in a statement carried by state media KCNA.
"When they are put in our shoes, the South Korean authorities will be able to understand even a bit how disgustedly we looked at them and how offending it was for us."
The two Koreas, which are still technically at war as their 1950-53 conflict ended without a peace treaty, have waged leaflet campaigns for decades but agreed to cease "all hostile acts" in a 2018 peace accord.
Several defector-led groups have regularly sent back flyers, together with food, $1 bills, mini radios and USB sticks containing South Korean dramas and news, usually by balloon over the border or in bottles in rivers.
One of the groups dropped a plan to float hundreds of plastic bottles stuffed with rice, medicine and face masks into the sea near the border on Sunday.
Pyongyang has also used balloons and drones to fly its anti-South leaflets, which in South Korea in the past have been rewarded with stationery if reported to police.
, based in South Korea, reported the North could sprinkle the leaflets or even use balloons to transport the messages over the border.
The two countries reached a tentative peace deal during talks in 2018 - agreeing to finally try and bring an official end to the Korean War after 60 years of deadlock.
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The two Koreas were officially divided in 1948, before the Soviet Union-backed North invaded the US-backed South just two years later.
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A bloody conflict was waged - almost acting as a proxy for the Cold War - before being ended with an armistice in 1953.
The North is now thought to be applying pressure in the hope of securing relief from crippling international economic sanctions.
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North Korea's state TV shows video of liaison office explosion
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