South Korea has decided to restart broadcasting anti-North Korean propaganda over loudspeakers in border areas in response to Pyongyang’s continued campaigns on sending waste to the South in hot air balloons.
After an emergency security meeting led by Director Chang Ho-jin, officials decided to install and begin loudspeaker broadcasts in border areas today, the Seoul Presidential Office said in a statement. The move will most likely lead to a reaction from the North and possible retaliation with military measures.
Seoul’s National Security Council convened an emergency meeting and approved the measure on anti-Pyongyang propaganda, a day after the North launched at least 330 more garbage-filled balloons in retaliation for its recent shipment of more than 200,000 across the border. leaflets and other material against leader Kim Jong-un by South Korean activists and civic groups.
“Although the measures we are taking may be difficult for the North Korean regime to bear, they will provide messages of light and hope to the North Korean military and citizens,” the Seoul Presidential Office said in its note. “We make it clear from the outset that the responsibility for any escalation of tension between the two Koreas will fall entirely on the North.”
The meeting, chaired by National Security Director Chang Ho-jin, came a week after the Council itself discussed responses to Pyongyang’s balloon campaigns and GPS jamming attacks in the Yellow Sea. After the meeting, Chang said the government would take “unbearable actions” against the North’s provocations.
President Yoon Suk-yeol on Tuesday approved the motion to fully suspend the 2018 comprehensive military pact to reduce inter-Korean tension, which was behind the resumption of propaganda broadcasts near the border. After the deal was halted, the South Korean military vowed to resume all military activities near the military demarcation line and the northwest border islands for the first time in more than five years.
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