Pyongyang, North Korea - North Korea was accused on Wednesday of sending hundreds of balloons containing trash and feces across the heavily fortified border with South Korea.

The South Korean military released images showing inflated balloons with plastic bags tethered to them.

Around 260 such balloons filled with trash and excrement had been launched by Wednesday afternoon, the military in Seoul said. They fell in various parts of the country, sometimes far from the border.

On Sunday, North Korea said it would send "mounds of wastepaper and filth" in a tit-for-tat action against the recent distribution of anti-Pyongyang leaflets flown across the border in the opposite direction.

Australia Parts of Great Barrier Reef raise alarms with highest coral mortality on record

South Korea will "directly experience how much effort it takes to remove" the rubbish, a statement attributed to North Korea's vice defense minister said over the weekend.

For years, organizations formed by North Korean refugees in South Korea have carried out propaganda campaigns at the border, sending out large balloons with leaflets calling for the overthrow of the leadership in Pyongyang.

Under the former South Korean government, a law came into force in 2021 banning the sending of leaflets and other objects along the military demarcation line between the two countries.

But the Constitutional Court lifted the ban last year, arguing that it restricted freedom of expression.