North Korea reinstalls propaganda speakers along border with South
North Korea is reinstalling propaganda loudspeakers along the border with the South amid growing hostilities between Pyongyang and Seoul, military officials confirmed on Monday.
According to South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, the loudspeakers, which were dismantled on both sides during a diplomatic thaw in 2018, have been set up again in “multiple places” inside the demilitarised zone that separates the two nations.
"We are closely monitoring the North's moves to wage psychological warfare,” an official source told the Yonhap news agency.
Since the end of the Korean War in the 1950s until a 2018 agreement, both sides engaged intermittently in blasting propaganda at each other – the North choosing blistering condemnations of Seoul and the South opting for news about democracy, capitalism or popular K-pop songs to encourage defections.
The return to the broadcasts marks another escalation in tensions, stemming apparently from Pyongyang’s anger over defector groups sending messages and food parcels across the border using balloons.
The North retaliated last week by blowing up an inter-Korean liaison office set up in 2018 to foster better relations, and by threatening to send troops back into border areas.
Over the weekend, Pyongyang warned it would send 12 million of its own propaganda leaflets reflecting the “wrath and hatred of people from all walks of life,” which it was preparing to launch in over 3,000 balloons.
Many of the leaflets would feature the face of Moon Jae-in, the South Korean president, smeared with cigarette butts as an insult, the state-run Korean Central News Agency reported.
North Korea experts believe that while the regime has been angered by defector groups operating along the border, the real cause of Pyongyang’s ire is the lack of progress with the South and the US over denuclearisation in exchange for sanctions relief.
Some have suggested that the North is lashing out under severe economic pressure due to international sanctions, the impact of the coronavirus pandemic, and the drying up of humanitarian assistance.
“The larger economic context certainly shows Pyongyang getting backed into a corner,” Kyle Ferrier, director of academic affairs at the Korea Economic Institute of America, told Bloomberg.
