The influential sister of North Korean ruler Kim Jong-un warned on Sunday (06/09/2024) of “a new response” against South Korea if Seoul continues to broadcast propaganda against his regime through loudspeakers, amid growing tensions between both countries.
“If the Republic of Korea simultaneously carries out the broadcast of leaflets and loudspeakers over the border, it will undoubtedly witness the new reaction” from North Korea, Kim Yo Jong said in a statement carried late Sunday by the state news agency KCNA.
South Korea resumed loudspeaker broadcasts aimed at North Korea on Sunday, its military said, following a warning to Pyongyang to stop sending garbage balloons.
“This is the prelude to a very dangerous situation,” Kim said, referring to the South’s loudspeaker broadcasts.
The decision to resume emissions, as a form of psychological warfare, was made after North Korea launched about 330 balloons with garbage on Saturday, about 80 of them falling over the border, according to the South Korean military.
South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol on Tuesday completely suspended a military detente agreement he signed with North Korea in 2018, after Pyongyang sent hundreds of balloons loaded with bags full of waste, from cigarette butts to animal excrement.
Old Cold War attacks
That pact, signed at a time of improved diplomatic relations between the two countries technically at war, was aimed at reducing tensions on the peninsula and avoiding a military escalation, especially along the militarized border.
Its complete suspension allows Seoul to resume live firing exercises and propaganda campaigns against the North’s regime with loudspeakers on the border, a technique that dates back to the Korean War (1950-1953).
According to Kim Yo Jong, the last balloon campaign was supposed to end this Sunday but, as South Korea had resumed its propaganda campaign with loudspeakers, “the situation changed.”
In its campaigns, Seoul uses large loudspeakers to broadcast propaganda against the North Korean regime or K-pop music near the demilitarized zone that separates the two countries.
These messages exasperate Pyongyang, which has already threatened to shoot the speakers with its artillery.
“It is very possible that the resumption of loudspeaker messages will lead to an armed conflict” and that “North Korea will resume its shooting in the Yellow Sea or shoot at the balloons if the South launches them again,” estimates Cheong Seong- chang, director of Korean Peninsula strategy at the Sejong Institute.
“This type of provocation is likely to appear in a much stronger form in the Yellow Sea,” he added.
jc (reuters, ap, afp)
