(Seoul) South Korea announced that it would resume its loudspeaker propaganda campaigns towards the North on Sunday, denouncing the “escalation” by Pyongyang which sent it 330 new balloons of garbage the day before.
“We will install loudspeakers towards North Korea today and start broadcasting” propaganda, the South Korean presidency said in a statement, stressing that “responsibility for the escalation of tension between the two Koreas would be entirely the responsibility of the North.”
Although they “may be difficult for the regime” of Kim Jong-un to bear, these measures “will convey messages of light and hope to the North Korean military and citizens,” Seoul says.
At the end of May, North Korea began sending hundreds of aerostats to its southern neighbor weighted with bags full of various trash, ranging from cigarette butts to animal excrement.
After announcing an end to it on June 2, it started again on Saturday, in reaction to this week’s sending northward by South Korean activists of balloons loaded with propaganda leaflets and USB sticks containing K-pop and television series.
“So far, about 80 [balloons] have fallen in our area and nothing is currently identified in the air,” Seoul’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement.
Analysis of these balloons shows that they did not contain “any dangerous substances”, she said on Sunday. However, it warned its citizens to stay away from these aerostats and to report their presence to the authorities.
South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol on Tuesday suspended the entirety of a military detente agreement concluded in 2018 with North Korea.
Signed when relations between Seoul and Pyongyang were better, the 2018 agreement aimed to reduce tensions on the peninsula, particularly along the border.
The South says it carries out this type of propaganda, which dates back to the Korean War (1950-53), in retaliation for what it sees as continued North Korean provocations.
She last used it in 2016, after Pyongyang’s fourth nuclear test.
During these campaigns, Seoul uses huge megaphones to broadcast K-pop or anti-regime propaganda in areas close to the demilitarized zone separating the two countries, which technically remain at war.
These broadcasts of messages exasperate Pyongyang, which has already threatened to target the speakers with its artillery if they were not turned off.
“It is very possible that the resumption of loudspeaker messages will lead to armed conflict” and that “North Korea will resume its firing in the Yellow Sea or that it will shoot at the balloons if the South sends them again”, said Cheong Seong-chang, director of Korean Peninsula strategy at the Sejong Institute.
North Korea also reportedly tried to jam GPS signals for several days at the end of May, without apparently succeeding in hindering any South Korean military activity.
“It is likely that this type of provocation will appear in a much stronger form in the West Sea as well,” Cheong Seong-chang added.
