Kim Yo Jong says North Korea will restart border loudspeakers within days

North Korea will put anti-South Korea loudspeakers on standby along the entire border within days and has placed unspecified new countermeasures on alert, Kim Yo Jong, the powerful sister of leader Kim Jong Un, said on Thursday, Business Recorder reported, citing Reuters.

Her statement, the latest in a series of threats, came with a warning to Seoul of “the most horrible and distressing situation” if South Korea keeps up what Pyongyang calls interference in the North’s internal affairs.

What Kim said

• On Wednesday evening, after visiting fortification sites with senior military officials, Kim said North Korea would switch on anti-South Korea loudspeakers across the border by the end of October.
• She said North Korean tactical units had taken up new positions.
• She accused South Korean troops of making warning broadcasts and firing warning shots at several places near the border.
• She warned that North Korean troops would “mercilessly eliminate” South Korean forces if warning fire caused harm to North Korean territory or personnel.

Seoul’s response

In response, South Korea said its warning shots were “legitimate and defensive measures”. The military and the Unification Ministry urged the North to return to talks, and the military said Kim’s statements showed that steps taken with the UN Command to tighten control in the demilitarised zone were working.

The defence ministry said Seoul would take “proportionate measures” if the North carried out its threats, though no decision had been made.

A blow to Lee’s outreach

The threats are a setback for South Korean President Lee Jae Myung, who has tried to ease hostility with the North, and have raised tensions on the border to their highest level since he took office in June last year.

Lee’s government stopped South Korea’s loudspeaker broadcasts and dismantled fixed border loudspeakers last year, calling them key confidence-building steps. North Korea then suspended its own broadcasts towards the South. Pyongyang has refused to resume dialogue and has designated the South as a hostile state.

Lim Eul-chul, a professor at Kyungnam University in Seoul, said Kim’s warnings did not necessarily mean the loudspeakers would be switched on immediately. But they left Lee’s government facing an “enormous dilemma”, he said, between keeping its policy of peaceful engagement and containing aggressive North Korean military activity on the border.

Why loudspeakers matter

Both North and South Korea have long used loudspeakers to broadcast propaganda across the border. South Korean broadcasts of K-pop and news have long angered Pyongyang and prompted tit-for-tat responses.

The two Koreas are divided by a demilitarised zone set up after the 1950-53 Korean War, which ended in an armistice rather than a peace treaty. Since 2024, North Korea has been reinforcing its side with mines, barriers and fencing as it tries to create what it calls a permanent border.

South Korea says North Korean mines laid during that work caused a blast last month that seriously wounded two of its soldiers. North Korea denies responsibility and calls the incident a South Korean fabrication.