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A military installation near the inter-Korean border in Paju, Gyeonggi Province, that previously served as a site for loudspeaker broadcasts into the North is seen on June 9, 2024, when South Korea moved to resume loudspeaker broadcasts. Whether or not the facility currently houses loudspeakers has yet to be confirmed. (Yonhap)

South Korea has expanded loudspeaker propaganda broadcasts into North Korea to all fronts 45 days after first resuming the broadcasts following a six-year hiatus on June 9. This represents a sharp increase in the tenor of the South Korean military’s response amid a vicious cycle of leaflets and trash-filled balloons being floated across the border from either side. The resumption of broadcasts is adding to concerns of a possible military clash in the border area.
 
“Despite the severe damage from heavy rain suffered by not only the South Korean public but the residents of North Korea, the North Korean military is continuing to act in a petty and shameless manner,” South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said on Sunday while announcing that they would “expand loudspeaker propaganda broadcasts to all fronts from 1 pm.”
 
Since May 28, North Korea has floated nine waves of trash-filled balloons south in retaliation for leaflets sent to North Korea by Fighters for Free North Korea, a North Korean defectors’ group based in South Korea.
 
Starting Sunday, the Joint Chiefs fully restarted daily loudspeaker broadcasts involving 40 loudspeakers along the border, 24 of which are fixed and 16 of which are mobile. South Korea’s military has gradually ramped up the level of its response to North Korea’s trash balloons, with the military carrying out a single two-hour loudspeaker propaganda broadcast on June 9, only to begin utilizing several speakers to broadcast for 10 hours a day, and finally to resume broadcasts on all loudspeaker units. 
 
The military is engaging in psychological warfare by blaring propaganda broadcasts from around the border when necessary from between 6 am to 10 pm.
 
Sunday marked the first day since the signing of the Sept. 19 inter-Korean military agreement in 2018 that loudspeaker propaganda broadcasts began in earnest. Loudspeaker propaganda broadcasts first began in 1963, under Park Chung-hee, and came to a halt with the adoption of the 2004 inter-Korean military agreement during the Roh Moo-hyun administration.

The broadcasts were also temporarily resumed under the Lee Myung-bak and Park Geun-hye administrations as a response to shows of force by the North, including the 2010 sinking of the ROKS Cheonan, a 2015 incident involving a landmine explosion in the DMZ, and a fourth nuclear test in 2016.

The broadcasts consist of retransmissions of “Voice of Freedom,” a program designed as psychological warfare against the North. Its content includes material that Pyongyang has responded sensitively to, including criticism of the generational succession in the Kim family and propaganda for capitalist systems.

The Friday broadcast included news about Ri Il-kyu, a North Korean diplomat in Cuba who defected to the South last November, along with South Korean popular music, which under the North’s law on “reactionary ideology and culture rejection” can result in punishments if North Koreans even listen to it.

With the North reacting so sensitively to the loudspeaker broadcasts, their full-scale revival has raised fears of a possible clash between the two sides.

After the 2015 incident in which two South Korean soldiers were severely injured by a North Korean landmine concealed in a wooden box, the subsequent resumption of loudspeaker broadcasts by the South Korean government prompted the North to open fire against the speakers on the western front.

Some observers are suggesting the military’s actions are disproportionate, with the use of loudspeakers coming in response to trash balloons that North Korea has been launching to protest the scattering of propaganda leaflets in its territory by civilian South Korean groups.

Hong Min, a senior research fellow at the Korea Institute for National Reunification, said, “The use of loudspeakers has been expanded from one-off broadcasts to all-day ones and regular ones, but it’s not clear that this is a proportionate response to the trash balloons.”

Others have said the situation suggests more of a need for regulations on propaganda leaflet distribution than for a competition where the two sides each respond with increasing forcefulness.

“If the distribution of leaflets in North Korea is stopped, there won’t be any more trash balloons, and then there will be no need for loudspeaker broadcasts either,” said Yang Moo-jin, a professor at the University for North Korean Studies.

“Rather than abetting the scattering of leaflets, government authorities should be taking active steps to regulate it,” he urged.

By Shin Hyeong-cheol, staff reporter

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