Kim Yo Jong says border loudspeakers ready within days

Kim Yo Jong, the sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, said on Thursday, Oct. 22, Seoul time, that propaganda loudspeakers aimed at South Korea will be "on standby in a matter of days" along the whole border. She also said that unspecified "new counter means" had been put on alert. She warned that Seoul would face "the most horrible and distressing situation" if it kept up what Pyongyang calls interference, Reuters reported.reuters.com

Her warning was carried by North Korea's state news agency KCNA. It was her second statement in a matter of hours, and Reuters said it could undo President Lee Jae Myung's efforts to ease tensions between the two Koreas. On Wednesday evening, she had said the loudspeakers would be switched on by the end of October.reuters.com

A Rebuke Aimed at Seoul

Kim said she was responding to Kim Byung-joo, President Lee's special adviser on defense policy. He had criticized the threat to resume broadcasts and demanded that the North apologize for its provocations. "The special assistant to the defense policy of Chongwadae should not talk incoherently but shut his mouth at once," she said, according to Yonhap via The Korea Herald. She said North Korea would keep building its border fortifications and claimed that finishing them would "considerably" lower the risk of military conflict.koreaherald.com

The statements came after a tour of frontline fortification sites on Tuesday, Oct. 20, with Marshal Pak Jong Chon of the Korean People's Army, one of her brother's top military officials. The Associated Press reported that during the visit she said the North's "new firepower units have taken their firing positions." Pak threatened an "overwhelming response" to any provocation by the South.independent.co.uk

Mine Blasts Raise the Stakes

Tensions rose after a land mine explosion inside the Demilitarized Zone on Sept. 21 injured three South Korean soldiers, two of them seriously. South Korea's military and the U.S.-led United Nations Command concluded that North Korean antipersonnel mines planted south of the Military Demarcation Line caused the blast. Pyongyang denies responsibility, The Korea Herald reported. South Korea's military says North Korean soldiers crossed the demarcation line 50 times this year during fortification work, and that it responded with warning shots and broadcasts, AP reported. The chairman of South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Jin Yong-sung, called Kim's earlier threat "intolerable" and ordered troops to "sternly respond" to any provocation.koreaherald.com+1

Lim Eul-chul, a professor at Kyungnam University in Seoul, said the warnings did not necessarily mean the loudspeakers would be turned on. He added that they still leave Lee's government in an "enormous dilemma," caught between its policy of peaceful engagement and the need to contain aggressive North Korean activity on the border, Reuters reported.reuters.com