South Korea to begin loudspeaker broadcasts in border areas in retaliation against Pyongyang's trash balloons
Jun 10, 2024
Seoul [South Korea], June 10 : In retaliation for North Korea's campaigns to use balloons to drop trash across the border, South Korea has announced that it will resume anti-North Korean propaganda loudspeaker broadcasts in border areas, reported Al Jazeera.
Seoul's presidential office said in a statement on Sunday that officials agreed to build and start broadcasting loudspeakers in border areas after an emergency security meeting presided over by South Korean national security director Chang Ho-jin.
South Korea may use loudspeakers to blast K-pop music, outside news, and anti-Pyongyang broadcasts across the heavily militarised border between the two countries.
According to observers, North Korea is particularly sensitive to these broadcasts because it worries that they may demoralise civilians and front-line troops, weakening leader Kim Jong Un's hold on power, as per the Al Jazeera report.
According to South Korean officials, in 2015, when South Korea resumed loudspeaker broadcasts for the first time in eleven years, North Korea launched artillery rounds across the border, causing South Korea to retaliate. There were no confirmed casualties, however, the report added.
Notably, Chang and other security officials from South Korea chastised Pyongyang for trying to incite "anxiety and disruption" in their country and emphasised that North Korea would bear "sole responsibility" for any further escalation of hostilities.
In response to South Korean civilian leafleting efforts, North Korea has so far dispatched more than 1,000 balloons dumping tonnes of garbage and manure into the South, further inflaming tensions between the war-torn rivals amid a diplomatic impasse over the North's nuclear aspirations, Al Jazeera reported.
It was only a few days after South Korean activists used their balloons to disperse propaganda leaflets in the North, North Korea launched hundreds of trash-carrying balloons into South Korea this past weekend, according to the South Korean military.
This was the country's third such campaign since late May.
