South Korea announced on Sunday to resume anti-North Korean broadcast via loudspeakers in border areas in retaliation for Pyongyang’s balloons carrying rubbish, POLITICO reported.
Officials decided to deploy and start broadcasting through loudspeakers after an emergency security meeting held by South Korean National Security Director Chang Ho-jin on Sunday. Chang and other South Korean security officials criticised Pyongyang for trying to cause “anxiety and disruption” in South Korea and emphasised North Korea would be “solely responsible” for any future tensions between the Koreas.
South Korea may use loudspeakers to broadcast anti-Pyongyang programmes, K-pop songs and outside news across the rivals’ heavily armed border. Analysts say this will ultimately weaken leader Kim Jong UN’s power as Pyongyang is extremely sensitive due to fears of demoralising the forward troops.
South Korea’s attempt is certain to anger Pyongyang and potentially prompt it to retaliate militarily, as well as heighten tensions between the war-divided rivals amid a diplomatic stalemate over the North’s nuclear ambitions.
North Korea has sent more than 1,000 balloons filled with rubbish and dung in the past couple of weeks. Pyongyang took the step after South Korean activists sent out balloons filled with anti-North Korean leaflets as well as USB sticks with popular South Korean songs and dramas.
Rising tensions
In 2015 – because of broadcasting via loudspeakers for the first time in 11 years – North Korea fired artillery rounds across the border, prompting South Korea to return fire. No injuries have been reported.
Tensions rose sharply last week over balloons carrying rubbish from North Korea. In a result, South Korea suspended the 2018 agreement to ease tensions with North Korea. Now, this will allow Seoul to resume propaganda campaigns and possibly resume live-fire military drills in border areas.
South Korean Defence Minister Shin Won-sik, in a meeting with top military commanders, called for meticulous preparations against the possibility of the North responding to the loudspeaker broadcasts with direct military action. However, South Korea’s defence ministry did not confirm whether the loudspeaker broadcasts had begun Sunday afternoon.
North Korea continued to launch hundreds of balloons into South Korea over the weekend. South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff stated it found that North Korea had launched about 330 balloons towards the South since Saturday evening, and about 80 of them had been detected in South Korean territory as of Sunday morning.
In turn, North Korea’s Deputy Defence Minister Kim Kang Il later claimed his country would halt the balloon launch campaign, but threatened to resume it if South Korean activists sent out leaflets again.
Liberal lawmakers, some civic groups and frontline South Koreans have urged the government to call for the activists distributing the leaflets to stop ballooning to avoid unnecessary clashes with North Korea. Still, government officials have not filed such an appeal in line with a Constitutional Court ruling last year that struck down a law criminalising leaflets against North Korea as a violation of free speech.
