Vice Unification Minister Hong Yang Ho will preside over the closed-door meeting, a ministry official said, refusing to elaborate.

Yonhap news agency said officials from the presidential office, the prime minister's office, the foreign ministry, the defence ministry and the National Intelligence Service would also take part.

Ties have become increasingly strained over the leaflets and other disputes, with the North vowing to shut the border from December 1.

Such a move would cripple the Seoul-funded Kaesong joint industrial estate developed just north of the frontier as a symbol of cooperation. The North has threatened to evict South Koreans from Kaesong in protest at the leaflets.

Defector groups and families of Southerners abducted by the North in past decades have launched balloons carrying tens of thousands of leaflets across the heavily fortified border.

These criticise the North's leader Kim Jong Il as a dictator and repeat claims that he suffered a stroke.

The unification ministry, in charge of inter-Korean relations, has called in vain for an end to the leaflet launches. This week it said it is 'looking for legal grounds' to stop the activity but gave no details.

Local media have reported that Seoul was considering applying gas safety laws in order to ground the hydrogen-filled balloons.

A local rights group says the North's authorities appear increasingly concerned about the leaflets, some of which had reached the outskirts of Pyongyang.

The Network for North Korean Democracy and Human Rights said on its website that troops, police and army reservists had been deployed along the border to collect the leaflets.

Authorities were spreading rumours that the flyers had been sprayed with radioactive material which could blind readers, the group said.

Readers of the leaflets already face punishment from authorities. South Korean activists sometimes mix US dollar bills or yuan notes with the flyers to encourage North Koreans to pick them up. -- AFP