SEOUL - DEFECTORS Wednesday floated leaflets across the tense border into North Korea, calling for the ousting of leader Kim Jong-Il as the communist state marked its most important holiday.

Nine defectors shouted 'Down with dictator Kim Jong-Il!' as they released ten huge balloons carrying 100,000 flyers at Imjingak in South Korea, just south of the heavily fortified frontier.

The balloon launch was timed to mark the anniversary of the birth of the North's founding president Kim Il-Sung, who died in 1994 and was succeeded by his son Jong-Il.

Pyongyang has responded angrily to the UN Security Council's condemnation of the exercise.

The North said on Tuesday it would boycott six-nation nuclear disarmament talks. It ordered UN inspectors to leave the country, vowing to restart its nuclear weapons programme.

The leaflets Wednesday denounced Kim Jong-Il for letting people starve so he could develop missiles and urged communist party cadres to 'oppose and topple' him.

The rocket launch was aimed at blackmailing the international community into providing more aid and at prolonging Kim's dictatorship, they said.

The balloon campaign, the latest in a series, was led by Park Sang-Hak, who heads a group of North Korean defectors.

They attached 415 North Korean banknotes aimed at encouraging people to risk punishment by picking up the flyers.

The balloons also carried messages demanding the North release a South Korean employee detained on March 30 at a Seoul-funded industrial estate just north of the border.

Pyongyang alleges he criticised the regime and tried to persuade a local woman worker to defect. It has barred access to him.

The North is also separately holding two US journalists for an alleged illegal border crossing and 'hostile acts,' and says it will put them on trial.

The Seoul government has urged South Korean activists to halt the leaflet campaign on the grounds that it inflames already tense relations, but says it cannot ban it.