South Korea has begun dismantling loudspeakers that blare anti-North Korean propaganda across the border, as President Lee Jae Myung’s liberal administration seeks to mend fractured relations with Pyongyang.
In a statement, a spokesperson for the defense ministry said the removal was “a practical measure to ease inter-Korean tensions without impacting the military’s readiness posture.”
The move follows the suspension of propaganda broadcasts in June on orders from Lee, an advocate of reconciliation who has framed warmer relations with North Korea as a matter of economic benefit — a way to minimize a geopolitical liability long blamed for South Korea’s stock market being undervalued.
“Strengthening peace in the border regions will help ease tensions across all of South Korea, and increasing dialogue and exchange will improve the economic situation,” Lee said at a news conference last month.
Elementary school students watch the North Korean side from the Unification Observation Post in Paju, South Korea. (Ahn Young-joon / Associated Press)
First used by North Korea in 1962, with South Korea following suit a year later, propaganda loudspeakers have long been a defining feature of the hot-and-cold relationship between Seoul and Pyongyang, switched on and off with the waxing and waning of goodwill.
The last major stoppage was during a period of detente in 2004 and lasted until 2015, when two South Korean soldiers stationed by the border were maimed by landmines that military officials said had been covertly installed by North Korean soldiers weeks earlier.
Played by loudspeakers set up in the DMZ, or demilitarized zone, a 2.5 mile-wide stretch of land between the two countries, South Korea’s broadcasts once featured live singing and propagandizing by soldiers stationed along the border. In recent years, however, the speakers have played pre-planned programming that ranges from outright opprobrium to more subtle messaging intended to imbue listeners with pro-South Korea sympathies.
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The programming has included K-pop songs with lyrics that double as invitations to defect to South Korea, such as one 2010 love song that goes: “come on, come on, don’t turn me down and come on and approach me,” or weather reports whose power lies in their accuracy — and have occasionally been accompanied by messages like “it’s going to rain this afternoon so make sure you take your laundry in.”
With a maximum range of around 19 miles that makes them unlikely to reach major population centers in North Korea, the effectiveness of such broadcasts has come under question by some experts.
Still, several North Korean defectors have cited the broadcasts as part of the reason they decided to flee to South Korea. One former artillery officer who defected in 2013 recalled being won over, in part, by the weather reports.
“Whenever the South Korean broadcast said it would rain from this time to that time, it would always actually rain,” he told South Korean media last year.
South Korean army K-9 self-propelled howitzers take positions in Paju, near the border with North Korea. (Ahn Young-joon / Associated Press)
North Korea, however, sees the broadcasts as a provocation and has frequently threatened to retaliate with military action. In 2015, Pyongyang made good on this threat by firing a rocket at a South Korean loudspeaker, leading to an exchange of artillery fire between the two militaries.
Such sensitivities have made the loudspeakers controversial in South Korea, too, with residents of the border villages complaining about the noise, as well as the dangers of military skirmishes breaking out near their homes.
“At night, [North Korea] plays frightening noises like the sound of animals, babies or women crying,” one such resident told President Lee when he visited her village in June, shortly after both sides halted the broadcasts. “It made me ill. Even sleeping pills didn’t work.”
But it is doubtful that the dismantling alone will be enough for a diplomatic breakthrough.
Relations between Seoul and Pyongyang have been in a deep chill following the failure of the denuclearization summits between Trump and Kim Jong Un in 2018, as well as a separate dialogue between Kim and then-South Korean president Moon Jae-in.
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Tensions rose further during the subsequent conservative administration of Yoon Suk Yeol, who was president of South Korea from 2022 until his removal from office earlier this year. Yoon is currently being investigated by a special counsel on allegations that he ordered South Korean military drones to fly over Pyongyang last October.
Ruling party lawmakers have alleged that the move was intended to provoke a war with North Korea, and in doing so, secure the legal justification for Yoon’s declaration of martial law in December.
During Yoon’s term, Kim Jong Un formally foreswore any reconciliation with Seoul while expanding his nuclear weapons program.
That stance remains unchanged even under the more pro-reconciliation Lee, according to a statement by Kim Yo Jong, the North Korean leader’s younger sister, published by state news agency KCNA last month.
“No matter how desperately the Lee Jae Myung government may try to imitate the fellow countrymen and pretend they do all sorts of righteous things to attract our attention, they can not turn back the hands of the clock of the history which has radically changed the character of the DPRK-ROK relations,” she said.
This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
