North Korea reinstalls propaganda speakers along border with South

North Korea is reinstalling propaganda loudspeakers along the border with the South amid growing hostilities between Pyongyang and Seoul, military officials confirmed on Monday. According to South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, the loudspeakers, which were dismantled on both sides during a diplomatic thaw in 2018, have been set up again in “multiple places” inside the demilitarised zone that separates the two nations. "We are closely monitoring the North's moves to wage psychological warfare,” an official source told the Yonhap news agency. Since the end of the Korean War in the 1950s until a 2018 agreement, both sides engaged intermittently in blasting propaganda at each other – the North choosing blistering condemnations of Seoul and the South opting for news about democracy, capitalism or popular K-pop songs to encourage defections. The return to the broadcasts marks another escalation in tensions, stemming apparently from Pyongyang’s anger over defector groups sending messages and food parcels across the border using balloons. The North retaliated last week by blowing up an inter-Korean liaison office set up in 2018 to foster better relations, and by threatening to send troops back into border areas.

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