SEOUL, South Korea (AP) - North Korea threatened Thursday to expel South Koreans from two joint projects in the North if leaflets critical of the communist government keep arriving over the border.North Korean officials issued the warning during brief military talks with South Korea inside the Demilitarized Zone, the first government-level contact between the two Koreas in more than eight months. The two projects, an industrial park in the northern border town of Kaesong and a resort at scenic Diamond Mountain, have been lucrative sources of cash for impoverished North Korea and prominent symbols of reconciliation on the divided peninsula.
The two Koreas agreed in 2004 to end decades of propaganda involving leaflets, loudspeakers and radio broadcasts. But activists and some North Korean defectors living in the South still send helium balloons into the North carrying leaflets - and sometimes $1 bills - condemning North Korean leader Kim Jong Il and his communist regime.
Military officials accused the South of violating the agreement, warning that it would further deteriorate relations and "may spark off new military clashes," the North's official Korean Central News Agency reported. Col. Lee Sang-cheol, who headed the South Korean delegation told reporters he insisted that Seoul was abiding by the deal but legal restrictions prevent them from stopping activists from sending the leaflets.