North Korea has sent a message, denouncing the launch of anti-Pyongyang leaflets by South Korean civic groups and conveying its reservation for high-level inter-Korean talks.
 
The Ministry of Unification said the North sent the message early Sunday morning from the secretariat of its National Defense Commission to the Presidential Office of National Security through the West Sea military hotline.
 
In the message, Pyongyang blamed South Korean authorities for letting the civic groups send the leaflets on Saturday evening.
 
The message also said such negligence by the South showed that it does not welcome the North's proposal to improving inter-Korean relations and that the North will have to think about whether high-level talks will be possible in such an atmosphere.
 
In a message sent in response on Monday morning, the South Korean government confirmed that there is no legal basis to stop its citizens from sending leaflets into the North. It demanded that North Korea clearly state its stance on the high-level talks that the two Koreas had agreed to hold on October 4.

Unification Ministry spokesman Lim Byeong-cheol reiterated in a regular briefing Monday that the North should not use matters related to freedom of expression as an excuse for provocation or a precondition for talks. Lim also reaffirmed Seoul's stance that the second round of high-level talks must be held as previously agreed by the two Koreas. 
 
Some conservative civic groups, comprised mostly of North Korean defectors, had planned to send leaflets attached to balloons from the border city of Paju, Gyeonggi Province, on Saturday. However, they were blocked by the Paju residents and progressive civic groups who opposed the leaflet campaign. The groups still managed to send some of their leaflets at a different location in Gyeonggi Province later in the day. 
 
After the two Koreas agreed to hold another round of high-level talks, Seoul proposed the meeting be held on October 30 at the truce village of Panmunjeom. However, North Korea has demanded that the anti-Pyongyang leaflet campaign be stopped as a precondition to the second high-level talks between the two Koreas.