Thundering Loudspeakers, Leaflets and Excrement Balloons: North and South Korea Restart Cold War-Era Psychological Warfare

Gigantic South Korean loudspeakers blare BTS music. Large North Korean balloons carry manure, cigarette butts, and waste batteries. Small South Korean civilian leaflets slam North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

This dystopian psychological warfare scenario is starting to play again like the height of the Cold War era, leaving the distension of 2018 so far in the past that it’s like it never even happened.

The heavily fortified border is again filled with tensions.

Associated Press reported:

“On Sunday, South Korea redeployed its gigantic loudspeakers along the border for the first time in six years and resumed anti-Pyongyang propaganda broadcasts. The broadcasts reportedly included K-pop sensation BTS’s mega-hits like ‘Butter’ and ‘Dynamite’, weather forecasts, and news on Samsung, the biggest South Korean company, as well as outside criticism of the North’s missile program and its crackdown on foreign video.

South Korean officials say the ear-piercing broadcasts were retaliation against North Korea’s recent series of balloon launches that dumped trash into South Korea, though it suffered no major damages. The North says its balloon campaign was a tit-for-tat action against South Korean activists flying political leaflets critical of its leadership across the border.”

For North Korea, the broadcasts and leafleting campaigns are a huge provocation. They reinstalled its own propaganda loudspeakers at the border, but haven’t switched them on.

The psychological warfare, that the two Koreas agreed to halt in 2018, is fully back on.

“Some frontline North Korean soldiers testified after their defections to South Korea that they had enjoyed South Korean broadcasts that contained pop songs and accurate weather forecasts that warned of potential rain and advised them to gather up laundry hung on outdoor clotheslines.

In 2015, when South Korea restarted loudspeaker broadcasts for the first time in 11 years, North Korea fired artillery rounds across the border, prompting the South to return fire, according to South Korean officials. No casualties were reported.”

Back in 2018, things were much calmer, and North Korea even received some of the South’s biggest pop stars for a rare performance. Kim reportedly called it a ‘gift to Pyongyang citizens’.

The psychological warfare increases the risks of direct military clashes between the Koreas.

“Diplomacy between the two countries remains derailed since a broader U.S.-North Korea nuclear diplomacy collapsed in 2019. So it could be difficult for the rivals to set up talks as an off-ramp to get off the cycle of tit-for-tat tensions.”

And the threat of escalation and direct conflict is by no means simply a theory, since it now arises that a skirmish at the border has led to South Korean troops firing warning shots:

Daily Beast reported:

“South Korea’s military fired warning shots when a group of around 20 North Korean soldiers crossed the nations’ land border over the weekend, Seoul’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said Tuesday.

The northern troops crossed the military demarcation line inside the DMZ separating the two countries at around 12:30 p.m. on Sunday, according to a JCS spokesman. The breach took place amid heightened tensions between the two countries over the waves of balloons carrying trash and excrement which Kim Jong Un’s regime has floated southwards over the border.”

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