A leading civic group sent anti-Pyongyang leaflets across the inter-Korean border on Saturday amid escalating tensions sparked by the North's nuclear tests and missile launches.

The Fighters for a Free North Korea said that it has scattered some 80,000 leaflets critical of the communist regime.

The civic group regularly launches big balloons carrying such anti-Pyongyang leaflets in a campaign to spread dissenting messages in the reclusive country.

The campaign had irked North Korea in the past, which led to heightened inter-Korean tension.

In spite of the growing inter-Korean tension over the leaflet campaign, the South Korean government largely remained disinclined to interject itself in the matter, repeating its hands-off position.

In recent weeks, the North has carried out a series of missile launches in defiance of a U.N. resolution and in a gesture of displeasure over annual joint military exercises between the South and the U.S., which Pyongyang has long branded as a rehearsal for invasion.

(Yonhap)