By Hyunsu Yim

PAJU, South Korea (Reuters) – South Korean authorities in a village near the border with North Korea thwarted a plan on Thursday by a group of families of those believed to have been abducted by the North to send aloft balloons with leaflets criticising it, the group said.

The failed bid to send the balloons over the heavily militarised border comes at a sensitive time, when tension between the neighbours is at its highest in years.

North Korea has sent thousands of balloons carrying trash and propaganda into the South this year.

It described them as retaliation for inflatables sent by activists in the South bearing items such as leaflets criticising the North’s leaders, bibles and USB sticks loaded with K-pop music videos and dramas.

“Our vehicle was stopped and had things confiscated,” said Choi Sung-ryong, who heads the group representing the families, adding that he had been notified of the event by a telephone call early on Thursday.

A group of police officers was involved in blocking the balloon launch, Choi told reporters, adding that he would seek permission for another launch.

Authorities in Paju, the city near the site of the incident, said entry had been barred for people linked to efforts to distribute the leaflets critical of North Korea.

“If you disobey the order, we will punish you according to the law,” added its mayor, Kim Kyung-il.

Last year South Korea’s constitutional court overturned a ban on such launches of leaflets as a violation of free speech, but authorities in border areas have sought to discourage the practice.

Residents of the village near Paju, about an hour’s drive north of Seoul, also gathered to express their opposition to the planned launch.

“This is a matter of survival for us who came out here,” said Park Kyung-ho, a 53-year-old villager who was driving a tractor and urged the government to manage the risk.

Earlier this month, the province of Gyeonggi home to Paju vowed to crack down on the practice of flying anti-regime leaflets to the North, citing heightened tension and the risks posed to those living in border towns.

People across the political spectrum were opposed to sending leaflets, said another resident, Kim Geun-in, 72.

“I want anti-North Korean leaflets and the loudspeakers to stop,” she added. “I feel North Korea will stop only if South Korea does.”

Seoul this year resumed loudspeaker broadcasts of propaganda directed at the North, which also uses loudspeakers, a practice residents of border towns blame for causing severe noise nuisance.

The two Koreas are still technically at war after their 1950-53 war ended in an armistice, not a peace treaty.

(Reporting by Hyunsu Yim and Dogyun Kim in Paju; Editing by Ed Davies and Clarence Fernandez)