South Korean army soldiers remove camouflage from the loudspeakers near the border area between South Korea and North Korea in Yeoncheon, South Korea, Friday, Jan. 8, 2016.
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These broadcasts are reportedly considered highly insulting in Pyongyang, because they are damaging to the dignity of leader Kim Jong Un.
At noon on the North Korean leader’s birthday, South Korea fired up loudspeakers along the heavily fortified border and resumed the propaganda blasts that brought the reclusive regime to a war footing in August – and then to the negotiating table.
North Koreans are prohibited from listening to K-pop, but defectors have said their countrymen enjoy music and other elements of South Korea popular culture that are smuggled into the country on USB sticks and DVDs.
British Foreign Secretary, Philip Hammond has urged the South to show restraint, as resuming the broadcasts was “simply rising to the bait”.
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Seoul had also raised South Korea’s cyber security alert level.
A South Korean military official told Reuters that Seoul and Washington had discussed the deployment of U.S. strategic assets on the divided Korean peninsula, but declined to give further details.
But U.S. and other officials expressed deep skepticism about the claims.
But the popularity of K-Pop north of the border could be on the up now.
The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea announced Wednesday that it has successfully carried out its first hydrogen bomb test.
In the past, the broadcasts typically blared messages about alleged North Korean government mismanagement, human rights conditions, and the superiority of South Korean-style democracy, as well as world news and weather forecasts.
China “firmly opposes” the nuclear test, the Foreign Ministry has said, noting that it knew noting about the test beforehand.
And since the likelihood of North Korea invading South Meanwhile, Japan must try to cement the Japan-U.S. alliance as quickly as possible to enhance the credibility of the U.S. nuclear umbrella.
The U.N. Security Council has pledged new sanctions against North Korea after its purported hydrogen bomb test on Wednesday.
US Secretary of State John Kerry Thursday urged China to take a tougher line, saying Beijing’s cautious approach had not borne fruit.
While it is unclear how more sanctions would deter North Korea, which has paid little heed to global pressure as it conducted four nuclear tests since 2006, the United States and its ally South Korea are limited in their military response.
North Korea hence has proved to be a double-edged sword for the Chinese, who want to use it as a buffer between itself and U.S. allies like South Korea in the Asia Pacific.
Acquisition of a working H-bomb – with a destructive power that dwarfs the bombs it has tested in the past – would represent a massive leap forward in the North’s nuclear weapons capability. But since it is hard to tell whether the wave profile of an explosion was made by a hydrogen bomb, it is difficult to find evidence disproving the success North Korea claims.
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South Korea’s spy service said it thought the estimated explosive yield from the blast was much smaller than what even a failed hydrogen bomb detonation would produce.
