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South Korea’s subject has unopen down loudspeakers broadcasting anti-North Korean propaganda on the inter-Korean border, marking the caller wide government’s archetypal factual measurement toward easing tensions betwixt the war-divided rivals.
The South resumed the loudspeaker broadcasts successful June past twelvemonth pursuing a yearslong intermission successful retaliation for North Korea flying trash-laden balloons toward the South successful a intelligence warfare campaign.
South Korea’s Defence Ministry said Wednesday (June 11, 2025) the determination was portion of efforts “to reconstruct spot successful inter-Korean relations and beforehand bid connected the Korean Peninsula.”
North Korea, which is highly delicate to immoderate extracurricular disapproval of its authoritarian enactment and its third-generation ruler, Kim Jong Un, did not instantly remark connected the measurement by Seoul.
Also read: A War of inflatable ideology: How balloons are utilized arsenic geopolitical weapons
From May to November past year, North Korea flew thousands of balloons toward South Korea to driblet substances specified arsenic wastepaper, cloth scraps, cigaret butts and adjacent manure. The North said its balloon run came aft South Korean activists sent implicit balloons filled with anti-North Korean leaflets, arsenic good arsenic USB sticks filled with fashionable South Korean songs and dramas.
Trash carried by astatine slightest 1 North Korean balloon fell connected the South Korean statesmanlike compound successful July, raising concerns astir the vulnerability of cardinal South Korean facilities. Officials said the balloon contained nary unsafe worldly and nary 1 was hurt.
South Korea, successful effect to the North Korean balloons, reactivated its front-line loudspeakers to blast propaganda messages and K-pop songs toward the North. The playlist was intelligibly designed to onslaught the nervus of Pyongyang, arsenic Mr. im’s authorities since the COVID-19 pandemic has been intensifying a run to destruct the power of South Korean popular civilization and connection amongst the colonisation successful a bid to fortify his family’s dynastic rule.
The Cold War-style intelligence warfare campaigns added to tensions fueled by North Korea’s increasing atomic ambitions and South Korean efforts to grow associated subject exercises with the United States and fortify three-way information practice with Japan.
South Korea’s caller wide President, Lee Jae-myung, who took bureau past week aft winning a drawback election to regenerate ousted blimpish Yoon Suk Yeol, has vowed to amended relations with Pyongyang, which reacted furiously to Mr. Yoon’s hardline policies and shunned dialogue.
In his inaugural code past week, Mr. Lee vowed to reopen connection channels with North Korea to easiness tensions. But prospects for an aboriginal resumption of dialog betwixt the rival Koreas stay dim, arsenic North Korea has consistently rejected offers from South Korea and the United States since 2019, erstwhile atomic talks betwixt Washington and Pyongyang collapsed implicit sanctions-related disagreements.
North Korea’s precedence successful overseas argumentation is present firmly with Russia, which has received thousands of North Korean troops and ample amounts of subject instrumentality successful caller months for its warfighting successful Ukraine.
Yoon, who was removed from bureau successful April implicit his short-lived imposition of martial instrumentality successful December, had focused connected strengthening subject partnerships with Washington and Tokyo and connected securing stronger U.S. assurances of a swift and decisive atomic effect to support the South against a North Korean attack.
In a fierce absorption to Yoon’s policies, Kim successful January past twelvemonth declared that helium was abandoning the long-standing goals of a peaceful unification with the South and instructed the rewriting of the North’s constitution to cement the South arsenic a imperishable “principal enemy.”
Published - June 11, 2025 02:14 p.m. IST
English (US) ·