North Korea reinstalls border loudspeakers, defectors send leaflets amid rising tensions
- Relations between the two Koreas have deteriorated in recent weeks after the North blew up a joint liaison office and threatened military action
- North Korea’s military was seen putting up about 20 loudspeakers near the demilitarised zone, as defectors launched more balloons containing leaflets
North Korea’s military was seen putting up about 20 loudspeakers near the demilitarised zone (DMZ). Such systems were taken down after the two Koreas signed an accord in 2018 to cease “all hostile acts”, the South Korean military official said.
“We’re also considering reinstalling our own loudspeakers,” he said. “But the North hasn’t begun any broadcast yet, and we’re just getting ready to be able to counteract at any time.”
A spokeswoman at Seoul’s defence ministry declined to confirm North Korea’s moves but reiterated at a regular briefing that Pyongyang would “have to pay for the consequences” if it continues to defy joint efforts to foster peace.
The two countries have for decades pumped out propaganda from huge banks of speakers as a form of psychological warfare.
The South aired a blend of news, Korean pop songs and criticism of the northern regime, while the North blasted the South and praised its own socialist system.
Commercial satellite imagery of the liaison office site on Monday showed that the building remained standing, but had been heavily damaged.
Analysts at US-based 38 North, which tracks North Korea, said last week that the explosion “was clearly not a controlled detonation, as the building was not levelled and there was significant collateral damage to the adjacent buildings”.
The North began taking its recent actions as it denounced North Korean defectors in the South who regularly send propaganda leaflets, food, cash, mini radios and USB sticks containing South Korean dramas and news across the border, usually by balloon or in bottles in rivers and the ocean.
North Korea prepares ‘retaliatory punishment’ against South
On Tuesday, one group of defectors said it had secretly launched 500,000 leaflets, 500 booklets and 2,000 US$1 bills across the border into North Korea, in defiance of a South Korean government ban and legal action to stop such activities.
However, the balloons apparently blew to the south, instead of across the North Korean border. The large portrait was found some 10 hours afterwards in a stream in Hongcheon county, some 70km southeast of where the balloons were launched from. Leaflets were also found nearby, Yonhap news agency said.
Lee Min-bok, another defector who pioneered anti-Pyongyang leaflet launches in 2003, said wind directions are different at higher altitudes, and the balloons appear to have failed to get high enough to be carried by northern air currents.
The defectors whose airborne propaganda enraged North Korea
“This means all the balloons floated by Park’s colleagues last night must have ended up in the South,” Lee said.
The South’s Unification Ministry has filed a criminal complaint against the group and other defectors for sending materials to the North without required government permission.
But Park has vowed to continue with the launches, saying they were a “a fight for the freedom of North Korean people”.
