South Korea has conducted propaganda loudspeaker broadcasts toward North Korea, the military said Friday, in response to the North’s latest round of its trash balloon campaign against the South.
The broadcasts took place from Thursday evening to early Friday in areas near where the balloons were launched, the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said in a notice to reporters. It did not provide further details.
“Should North Korea ignore our warning and repeat such an action, our military will make sure to take all necessary measures for the North to rightly pay,” the JCS said in a statement.
The JCS condemned the North for carrying out such a “vulgar and dirty” act at a time when both South Koreans and North Koreans are suffering from heavy downpours, and warned that the military’s response going forward will depend on North Korea’s actions.
It marked the first anti-Pyongyang propaganda broadcasts near the border since June 9, when South Korea resumed blaring such broadcasts for the first time in six years in response to the North’s repeated balloon campaigns.
Since late May, North Korea has sent more than 2,000 trash-carrying balloons into the South in retaliation for North Korean defectors’ sending of anti-Pyongyang leaflets toward the North.
The JCS said it has detected around 200 trash-carrying 커뮤니티 balloons sent by the North since Thursday, with some 40 balloons landing in the northern area of Gyeonggi Province that surrounds Seoul.
The latest propaganda broadcasts reportedly involved some of the speakers installed near the western section of the heavily fortified border and continued for approximately 10 hours, beginning at 6 p.m. Thursday.
An analysis of the retrieved balloons showed they mostly carried scrap paper, the JCS said, adding there were no balloons that were in the air as of 9 a.m.