North Korea despite threats from Pyongyang."Mama! Look! Socks!"
"Oh, very good! I will make soup!"
The socks can be worn to help survive the harsh winter, be sold for cash or exchanged in the communist North for food that can keep a person going for a month, the campaigners say.
About 1,000 pairs of socks were launched by five large plastic balloons from the northern South Korean city of Paju. Each pair of socks was attached with a leaflet containing a "politically innocuous" message, said the Seoul-based group North Korea Peace, which has been sending socks to the North once a month over the past few months.
"We're not interested in sending political messages or sparking any troubles there. All we want is that people in the North wear warm socks over their frozen feet," Sunny Kim, a spokeswoman for North Korea Peace, told AFP. "Warm socks are so rare and they can easily be traded for cash in the North. One pair of socks fetches about 22 pounds (10 kilos) of corn, which is enough to sustain a person for a month."