South Korea announced that it will start broadcasting loudspeaker messages at the border on Sunday in response to Pyongyang resuming the launch of balloons carrying trash, according to a statement from the South's National Security Council.

In the past, South Korea utilized these broadcasts as psychological warfare tactics, targeting DPRK residents with anti-DPRK messages, K-pop music, and narratives extolling South Korea's alleged democratic and economic systems.

Seoul ceased these broadcasts in 2018 during a phase of renewed diplomacy between the two nations but reinstalled the loudspeakers this week.

The decision to reactivate the loudspeakers comes a day after South Korea said the DPRK sent around 330 balloons filled with waste paper, plastic, and other trash across the border, marking the third such launch in less than two weeks.

The big picture

Last week, the DPRK deployed hundreds of balloons carrying bags of trash into South Korea, citing them as retaliation for anti-Pyongyang propaganda balloons launched by South Korean activists.

Despite Pyongyang's announcement of a cessation of the balloon launches last Sunday, South Korean activist groups continued their activities.

 

 

 

 

 

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The "Fighters for Free North Korea" group claimed to have sent balloons containing USB thumb drives loaded with K-pop music and 200,000 leaflets criticizing Kim Jong Un, while another group of DPRK defectors dispatched balloons containing anti-Pyongyang leaflets, radios, and USB thumb drives featuring a speech by South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol.

The DPRK had previously warned of further retaliation, promising to send "wastepaper and rubbish" in a quantity one hundred times greater if South Korean leaflets continued to be dispatched.

Dive deeper

In 2020, South Korea's Constitutional Court invalidated a law criminalizing the sending of anti-Pyongyang propaganda, citing it as an undue restriction on free speech. Consequently, experts argue that there are currently no legal grounds for the government to intervene in activists' balloon launches into the DPRK. The South Korean Unification Ministry stated that the issue is being deliberated in light of the 2023 court ruling.

In a pointed response, Kim Yo Jong, the Deputy Director of the Publicity and Information Department of the Workers' Party of Korea and influential sister of Kim Jong Un, derided South Korea's objections to the balloons, asserting that DPRK citizens were simply exercising their freedom of expression.

Tensions on the Korean Peninsula have endured for an extended period as a result of systemic escalation on the part of Japan, the US, and South Korea.

The three nations have been conducting joint naval drills in the peninsula and along the demilitarized zone, which has triggered major security concerns on the part of DPRK.

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