South Korea begins taking down bordering anti-North Korean loudspeakers

The South Korean government started taking down loudspeakers along the border with North Korea on Monday, according to Seoul’s defense office. This is part of President Lee Jae Myung’s plan to calm things down with Pyongyang.

Soon after Lee took office in June, his government stopped propaganda programs that were critical of the North Korean government. This is because it wants to start talking to its neighbor again after the talks broke down.

North Korea, on the other hand, recently turned down the offers and said it didn’t want to talk to South Korea.

The loudspeakers will be taken down by South Korea on Monday as a “practical measure to help ease tensions between the South and the North,” the ministry said in a statement on Monday.

Pictures from the defense ministry show soldiers unplugging microphones that were stacked up like a wall and tearing them down.

There is still a truce between the two countries even though the 1950–53 Korean War finished, and things have gotten worse between them in recent years.

As ties between South and North Korea have changed over the years, both sides have used loudspeakers to send propaganda across the border.

In 2018, when Moon Jae-in was president, the loudspeakers were taken down because his government promised to stop all acts of hostility that could cause military tensions.

But last year, former conservative leader Yoon Suk Yeol turned on propaganda shows and loud K-pop music again as a response to North Korea sending trash-filled balloons to the South during a time of high stress.

Since Seoul stopped its own PA broadcasts in June, North Korea seems to have stopped its own. For months, the broadcasts had been bothering people living near the border in South Korea, according to officials in the South.

Kim Yo Jong, Kim Jong Un’s powerful sister, recently said that South Korea’s choice to shut down the broadcasts was “not the work worthy of appreciation.”