NORTH/ SOUTH KOREA: End of loudspeaker propaganda broadcast into North
Newly elected president eases confrontational stance toward Pyongyang
UCA News (12.06.2025) – South Korea’s military on June 11 stopped its loudspeaker broadcasts into North Korea in what is termed as the first step towards improving inter-Korean relations.
K-pop and propaganda had blared across the demilitarized zone for more than a year in retaliation against the North sending balloons laden with trash and human feces over the South.
The South’s move fulfills one of the campaign promises of new South Korean President Lee Jae-myung, who favors engagement with Pyongyang. This contrasts with his conservative predecessor Yoon Suk Yeol who adopted a more confrontational stance toward the North.
The move is termed by South Korea’s Defense Ministry as a bid to “restore trust,” ease tensions and restart dialogue with Pyongyang.
The military’s decision to halt the broadcasts was also driven partly by the fact that North Korea had also stopped sending the trash-laden balloons across the border since late last year, according to a Radio Free Asia (RFA) report.
The broadcasts have a long history. South Korea used loudspeakers to pump propaganda messages into North Korea in 1963, and the North retaliated in the same manner until 2004, when they agreed to stop after negotiations.
But in 2015, after South Korean soldiers were injured by a North Korean landmine inside the demilitarized zone (DMZ) that separates the two Koreas, the South started it again.
Three years later, the two governments again agreed to halt the broadcasts after a rare summit between their leaders, until the South resumed them last June. The North responded with unsettling noises — howling wolves, clanging gongs and other irritating sounds — from speakers within their half of the DMZ, the RFA report said.
However, analysts feel North Korea will continue its hostility toward the South irrespective of what President Lee Jae-myung does.
Though the North did remove “puppet” — a derogatory term used by North Korea to describe the South — from reports by state newspaper, the Rodong Sinmun, there has hardly been any attempt to alter its own stance.
“This can be interpreted as suggesting North Korea’s abandonment of its will to unify the Korean Peninsula,” Lim Su-jin, a researcher at the Institute for National Security Strategy, was quoted by RFA as saying.
In the report, Lim says recent North Korean reports on South Korea have shifted from direct criticism to “strategic indifference,” and are focused primarily on its relations with the United States.
Earlier this week, South Korea’s Unification Ministry also called on activists to stop sending propaganda leaflets into North Korea, saying it “could heighten tensions on the Korean Peninsula and threaten the lives and safety of residents in border areas.”
Photo: Director of Human Rights Without Frontiers interviewed by CNN at the DMZ border between South Korea and North Korea / Credits: HRWF
