Psychological warfare has exploded again on the 38th Parallel. The South Korean army began theoperation «Echo of freedom», conducted with large loudspeakers that launch propaganda towards the North. The broadcasts at full volume boast the economic and cultural superiority of the South, contain messages about the backwardness and isolation of North Korea, international news unwelcome to the Pyongyang regime. “This is information of light and hope for North Korean citizens and a response to the despicable actions” ordered by Kim Jong-un, says the Seoul Army General Staff.
The reference is ai balloons loaded with rubbish that North Korean propaganda began launching at the end of May beyond the border. In the South, a thousand bags full of landfill material rained down, from spent batteries to cigarette butts, plastic bottles, debris, soles of old shoes as a sign of contempt and even excrement. At the beginning of this strange bombing, on the night of May 28, Seoul’s civil defense gave the alarm to the citizens: “Suspicious objects are falling on our territory, be on your guard, don’t get close, don’t touch them.” Teams of bomb squads and chemical and bacteriological remediation technicians were sent to recover the balloons that came from the North, fearing that the bags contained explosive or contaminated material. The cleaners in hermetic suits ascertained that it was only rubbish, but the alarm remained in force.
After the first ones 700 balloons, for a few days the northerners stopped. Then from the South two groups of North Korean refugees sent around twenty balloons with 400 thousand leaflets across the border and Pyongyang reacted with a new wave of rubbish. This weekend another 400 bags landed on South Korean territory, bringing the total to 1,000.
Thus the military retaliation ordered by Seoul began, with the batteries of “Echo of Freedom” loudspeakers placed on the southern slope of the 38th Parallel.
The transmissions, according to the South Korean military, have a power that makes messages audible up to 10 kilometers within Northern territory during the day and up to 24 kilometers in the silence of the night.
The loudspeaker strategy is a remnant of the Cold War: for decades, after the Korean War (1950-1953) interrupted by a ceasefire, the two propaganda groups had challenged each other with insults shouted from their large amplifiers on both sides of the demilitarized zone . At the height of the operation i South Koreans had 10 fixed and 40 mobile speaker batteries and they had refined their broadcasts by airing also musical pieces from their famous K-pop, the listening of which is forbidden to North Korean citizens by the regime’s censors.
Seoul had shut down and removed the speakers in April 2018, when Kim Jong-un was on his honeymoon with then South Korean President Moon Jae-in and the Two Koreas promised each other a new era of détente. But the North’s latest moves have destroyed the remains of that phase of dialogue.
Since the beginning of the year, Kim has been repeating that the South is “an enemy to be destroyed”, presiding over continuous military exercises with missiles, cannons and tanks. A few days ago the Marshal fired 18 short-range missiles simultaneously, to prove once again his ability to order an attack at any moment.
In this hot climate, loudspeakers with news and music may seem like a harmless game. But Pyongyang evidently fears that its front-line forces will leave demoralize by enemy transmissions. In the past, to silence their opponents, the Northerners opened the fire with cannons aiming at the clusters of speakers, which average six by three meters across. The last time was in 2015 and an artillery duel raged for a few hours.
