South Korea announced Sunday that it would resume loudspeaker propaganda campaigns against the North after Pyongyang sent a fresh barrage of trash-filled balloons across the border.
Relations between the two Koreas are at one of their lowest points in years and in recent weeks the two have engaged in a tit-for-tat campaign of balloon launches, with analysts warning the escalatory cycle could end in actual military skirmishes.
Seoul this month suspended a 2018 military deal aimed at reducing tensions on the peninsula after Pyongyang sent hundreds of balloons carrying bags of garbage, including cigarette butts and plastic waste, paving the way for the resumption of the loudspeaker campaigns.
Seoul has slammed the balloon launches as “low class” but, unlike Kim Jong Un’s repeated ballistic missile tests, they do not violate rafts of UN sanctions on the nuclear-armed North.
“We will install loudspeakers against North Korea today and carry out the broadcast,” the president’s office said in a statement, adding that “the responsibility for the escalation of tension between the two Koreas will be entirely up to the North”.
It described the move as “corresponding measures” for the more than 300 trash-filled balloons that Pyongyang sent across the border in a fresh blitz that started on Saturday.
“Although the measures we are taking may be difficult for the North Korean regime to endure, they will deliver messages of light and hope to the North Korean military and citizens,” it said.
Activists in the South have floated dozens of balloons bearing K-pop, dollar bills and anti-Kim Jong Un propaganda northwards in recent weeks, infuriating Pyongyang which has retaliated in kind.
Pyongyang sent nearly a thousand balloons across the border in late May and early June before calling off its campaign. It restarted on Saturday in response to new launches last week by the activists, against which Seoul’s government has almost no legal recourse.
The Seoul city government, as well as officials in surrounding Gyeonggi province, sent out a text alert to residents on Saturday warning about the new balloons.
