The armed forces of South Korea began what they confirmed will be daily, unceasing loudspeaker broadcasts on the border with North Korea on Friday, typically featuring anti-communist content, news banned by the Kim regime, and South Korean popular music.
North Korea’s communist dictatorship has for years indicated that it finds the South Korean loudspeaker broadcasts as some of the most irritating actions against the regime, which strictly controls what media its citizens can legally consume. All media not created by the North Korean communist regime is illegal in the country, ensuring citizens are not properly informed on the outside world.
South Korea shelved the loudspeakers, which permeate the border area known as the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), in June in response to an ongoing campaign by North Korea to dump balloons full of trash into the South. The North resumed the “trash balloon” dumps in response to a South Korean Supreme Court decision that ruled it was unconstitutional for the government to block activists from attempting to fly balloons carrying political pamphlets or food supplies into North Korea, as many anti-communist groups have traditionally done.
The regime of dictator Kim Jong-un has flown more than 2,000 trash balloons into South Korea since May, 200 of them overnight between Thursday and Friday. Only about 40 of them managed to cross the border, a result of the weather when they were deployed, the Korea JoongAng Daily reported on Friday.
“If [the South] scum persists in their crude and dirty play, the mode of counteraction of the [North] will inevitably be changed,” Kim Jong-un’s sister, Kim Yo-jong, warned on Tuesday, preceding the latest balloon drop.
The South Korean military confirmed that the balloons mostly contained paper and did not appear to contain any hazardous materials, then issued a statement announcing 24/7 broadcasts on its border loudspeaker system.
“These actions clearly violates [sic] the armistice agreement and are shameful and vulgar behaviour that could pose risks to the daily lives of our people,” the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), the nation’s military, said in a statement, according to Reuters. “We strongly urge them to immediately stop the despicable, shameful and vulgar act.”
South Korea’s KBS World similarly confirmed on Friday that the broadcasts would occur “every day for the time being.”
The broadcasts began on Thursday evening and concluded around 4:00 a.m. local time on Friday, JoongAng reported. The broadcast ended before Friday’s announcement of continuous operation of the loudspeaker later that day. Neither it nor other South Korean outlets specified the content of the broadcasts.
North and South Korea have been in a technical state of war since 1950, a result of the communist North, led by the nation’s founder Kim Il-sung, attacking the South in an attempt to impose communism on the entire Korean peninsula. While active fighting concluded with an armistice agreement in 1953, neither side signed a peace treaty or surrendered, so the war never officially ended.
South Korea began weaponizing loudspeaker broadcasts against the North in 1963 but had not used them for a decade when President Yoon Suk-yeol approved of resuming them in June. That month, Seoul aired one session of a program called “Voice of Korea,” with news of the outside world and anti-North Korean statements, as well as weather reports and other information. South Korean media also reported that the country broadcast songs by the superstar South Korean boy band BTS, which is currently on hiatus as most of its members are fulfilling South Korea’s mandatory military service for men.
“Should North Korea ignore our warning and repeat such an action, our military will make sure to take all necessary measures for the North to rightly pay,” the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff warned.
Tensions have flared between the Koreas this summer as dictator Kim Jong-un successfully pursued closer ties to neighboring Russia. Russian strongman Vladimir Putin, who has counted on Kim as a vocal supporter of his ongoing invasion of neighboring Ukraine, visited Pyongyang in June and signed a mutual defense treaty that greatly alarmed Seoul, as it could be interpreted to require Russian action against South Korea if North Korea interprets any of its actions as a military attack. The bizarre offensive behavior between the Koreans – including the “trash balloons” and the loud music – in many ways are attempts to avoid conducting any action that could render the 1953 armistice agreement obsolete and rekindle a hot war between the two Koreas.
South Korea responded to Putin’s visit to Pyongyang by publicly speculating that it could provide military support to Ukraine.
“As for the supply of lethal weapons to the combat zone in Ukraine, it would be a very big mistake,” Putin told reporters in late June. “I hope it will not happen. If it does, then we too will then make the respective decisions, which South Korea’s current leadership is unlikely to be pleased with.”
The South Korean government has since stated that it would not take any such action unless the Russian government took threatening actions against itself.
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