South Korea on Wednesday switched off loudspeakers that had been broadcasting Okay-pop songs, information and different propaganda into North Korea for the previous 12 months — one of many first concrete steps taken by the newly elected leader, Lee Jae-myung, to enhance inter-Korean ties.
Mr. Lee ordered his navy to show off the high-powered loudspeakers on Wednesday afternoon to “assist restore belief in South-North Korean relations and construct peace on the Korean Peninsula,” mentioned Kang Yu-jung, Mr. Lee’s spokeswoman.
Inter-Korean relations plunged to their lowest level in a few years underneath Mr. Lee’s impeached predecessor, Yoon Suk Yeol, because the nations escalated a tit-for-tat trade throughout the border. Mr. Yoon supported the thought of spreading exterior data into the remoted North. He allowed activists in the South — most of them defectors from the North — to launch giant balloons loaded with propaganda leaflets that contained information and bitter criticism of the North’s chief, Kim Jong-un, calling him “a bloodthirsty dictator” or “pig.”
North Korea bristled on the balloons and retaliated final 12 months by sending balloons loaded with cigarette butts and other trash into the South.
Mr. Yoon’s authorities responded by turning on its propaganda loudspeakers a 12 months in the past, bombarding North Korean troopers and villagers alongside the border with Okay-pop music and information. The North amped up its own loudspeakers, broadcasting eerie noises that South Korean villagers on the border discovered so irritable that they put in double-pane home windows and different sound insulation at residence.
By switching off its loudspeakers first on Wednesday, Mr. Lee’s authorities basically proposed a cease-fire within the loudspeaker battle. South Korean navy officers mentioned on Wednesday that they have been monitoring the border to see if the North would reciprocate by turning off its loudspeakers.
“We hope that North Korea can even cease its noise assault, so we are able to all return to a traditional life,” mentioned Park Yong-cheol, the mayor of Gwanghwa, a South Korean county on the border with the North.
Throughout his marketing campaign for the election on Tuesday final week, Mr. Lee sharply criticized Mr. Yoon’s coverage on North Korea, accusing him of unnecessarily elevating tensions. He vowed to enhance inter-Korean ties by searching for to revive channels of dialogue between the 2 Koreas. He additionally mentioned that the 2 Koreas ought to cease actions that raised tensions.
Earlier this week, Mr. Lee’s authorities additionally started urging activist teams in South Korea to not launch propaganda balloons throughout the border. It mentioned that the balloons did extra to lift political tensions with the North than to enhance its individuals’s entry to exterior information.
However activists insisted that sending balloons to the North was a part of their constitutionally assured freedom of expression. They additionally accused Mr. Lee’s authorities of undermining the North Koreans’ proper to data and of appeasing Mr. Kim’s regime within the identify of decreasing tensions.
South Korean officers indicated that they’d take into account invoking home legal guidelines on aviation and public security to crack down on the makes an attempt to ship balloons. South Korean residents alongside the border have complained that the activists’ balloons threatened their security by elevating navy tensions and prompting North Korea to ship trash balloons.
North Korea didn’t instantly react to South Korea’s newest overtures.
However it has stopped sending trash balloons since November as South Korea lurched by means of monthslong home political turmoil triggered by Mr. Yoon’s short-lived imposition of martial legislation in December, and his subsequent impeachment and elimination from workplace.
Below Mr. Kim, North Korea has grown more and more hostile towards the South. It has shut off all dialogue with Seoul and Washington, and doubled down on testing nuclear-capable missiles. Mr. Kim has vowed to deal with South Korea not as a associate for reunification, however as an enemy that the North should annex — if needed, with its nuclear weapons — ought to battle escape. The North additionally demolished in October all railway and highway hyperlinks between the 2 Koreas with dynamite.
Within the South, Mr. Yoon was additionally confrontational towards the North. His authorities expanded joint navy drills with america and Japan, which concerned plane carriers, strategic bombers and stealth jets, to discourage Mr. Kim. Mr. Yoon known as for spreading the thought of freedom to the North to penetrate the data blackout Mr. Kim lengthy has relied on to take care of his totalitarian rule.
