South Korea expressed strong regret Sunday over North Korea's latest threat to cease all inter-Korean contact due to the scattering of anti-Pyongyang propaganda leaflets across the border, ruling out the possibility of holding a new round of high-level talks.

A day earlier, the North called on the South to halt the cross-border leaflet campaign, warning that there would be no government-to-government dialogue to improve ties unless Seoul takes action to block it.

"It is very regretful that North Korea has expressed its intention to scupper inter-Korean dialogue by falsely claiming the leaflet campaign is backed by our government," Lim Byeong-cheol, a spokesman for the unification ministry, said in a statement.

"North Korea is not responding to Seoul's call to hold a high-level meeting by setting undue preconditions," he said. "Under the current situation, the possibility of inter-Korean high-level talks has virtually fallen through."

In early October, North Korea sent a high-powered delegation to the South, agreeing to hold a second round of high-level talks between late October and early November. Seoul had offered to hold a fresh round of high-level talks on Thursday.

Last week, however, Pyongyang rejected the proposal, taking issue with Seoul's stance toward the leaflet campaign.

Activists in the South often send balloons containing anti-Pyongyang propaganda leaflets as well as U.S. dollar bills across the border. The flyers mostly criticize the corruption and abysmal human rights conditions in the North.

In the latest campaign, a group of North Korean defectors on Friday launched such leaflets to the North from South Korea's northern city of Pocheon, north of Seoul.

North Korea claimed that the practice is part of the United States' attempts to topple its regime, saying the Seoul government supports the activists behind the scenes.   

Seoul officials insist that there is no legal basis to prohibit the campaign. When the activists flew anti-Pyongyang leaflets in mid-October, border guards of the two Koreas traded machine gun fire. Some North Korean rounds were later found to have landed near Paju, a South Korean border town. (Yonhap)