(Seoul) The South Korean military has resumed broadcasting propaganda to North Korea over loudspeakers in response to Pyongyang’s repeated sending of garbage-laden balloons to the South, it said Friday.
North Korea on Thursday launched a new batch of some 200 balloons towards its southern neighbour, the eighth since May, Seoul said.
“We have repeatedly and seriously warned North Korea about its continued release of garbage balloons,” South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement.
Following these warnings, “our armed forces broadcast propaganda broadcasts to the North by loudspeaker” from Thursday evening to Friday morning, the general staff added.
The anti-regime propaganda broadcasts near the border are the first since June 9, when South Korea resumed broadcasts for the first time in six years in response to Pyongyang’s balloon launches, a defense ministry spokesman told AFP.
Nuclear-armed North Korea has sent more than a thousand balloons south in retaliation for balloons carrying propaganda against Kim Jong-un’s regime sent north by South Korean activists.
Following the “balloon war,” Seoul completely suspended a military agreement aimed at reducing tensions between the two countries and warned in June that it was restarting loudspeaker propaganda along the border.
Seoul broadcast songs by K-pop megastars BTS and information on Samsung’s global mobile sales to North Korea on June 9, according to South Korea’s Yonhap news agency.
North Korea, a reclusive country, is seeking to ban its population from accessing South Korean popular culture, such as K-pop and K-drama series.
In 2022, a North Korean citizen was executed by Pyongyang for possessing cultural content from the South.
The sound propaganda, a tactic that dates back to the 1950-53 Korean War, infuriates Pyongyang, which has already threatened to target South Korean loudspeakers with artillery.
Relations between the two Koreas are currently at their lowest in years as the North steps up tests and provocations and moves closer to Russia.
Seoul also recently resumed live-fire drills near its border with the North.