This file photo shows loudspeakers being taken down at a western front-line unit in June 2004. (Image courtesy of Yonhap)
SEOUL, Jul. 19 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea’s military conducted propaganda loudspeaker broadcasts toward North Korea in response to its latest launch of trash-carrying balloons into the South, the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said Friday.
The broadcasts took place from Thursday evening to early Friday in areas near where the balloons were launched, the JCS said in a notice to reporters. It did not provide further details.
“The military’s response going forward will fully depend on North Korea’s actions,” the JCS said Friday.
It marked the first anti-Pyongyang propaganda broadcasts near the border since June 9, when South Korea resumed blaring such broadcasts for the first time in six years in response to the North’s repeated balloon campaigns.
Since late May, North Korea has sent more than 2,000 trash-carrying balloons into the South in retaliation for North Korean defectors’ sending of anti-Pyongyang leaflets toward the North.
The JCS said it has detected around 200 trash-carrying balloons sent by the North since Thursday, with some 40 balloons landing in the northern area of Gyeonggi Province that surrounds Seoul.
The latest propaganda broadcasts reportedly involved some of the speakers installed near the western section of the heavily fortified border and continued for approximately 10 hours, beginning at 6 p.m. Thursday.
An analysis of the retrieved balloons showed they mostly carried scrap paper, it said, adding there were no balloons that were in the air as of 9 a.m.
South Korea turned on loudspeaker broadcasts last month as it fully suspended the 2018 inter-Korean military tension reduction agreement in response to the North’s massive sending of trash-carrying balloons.
The accord, signed under the former liberal Moon Jae-in administration, bans live-fire artillery drills near the border and other acts deemed hostile against each other.
North Korea has bristled against the loudspeaker campaigns, as well as anti-Pyongyang leaflets sent by South Korean activists, on fears that an influx of outside information could pose a threat to the Kim Jong-un regime.
Following the June 9 broadcast, North Korea warned of “new responses” against such psychological warfare, calling it a “prelude to a very dangerous situation.”
Earlier this week, Kim Yo-jong, the powerful sister of the North’s leader, threatened that South Korea will face “gruesome and dear” consequences if it lets North Korean defectors continue to send leaflets critical of North Korea.
(Yonhap)
