South Korea cracks down on balloons and K-pop broadcasts to ease tensions with North

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Over the past year, the border dividing the Korean peninsula has been the site of a fierce broadcast battle, with both sides aiming deafening loudspeakers at the other.

But South Korea’s new leftwing president, Lee Jae-myung, has taken early steps to dial down the acrimony, ordering his country’s military to cease the broadcasts in a possible early signal of his administration’s more conciliatory stance towards its northern adversary.

Lee’s spokesperson Kang Yoo-jung said the move to halt the broadcasts was “intended to de-escalate the military stand-off between the two Koreas”.

“President Lee made this decision as a pre-emptive step to ease tensions, given the absence of any recent major provocations by North Korea,” she said, adding that his government was committed to “restoring trust in inter-Korean relations and establishing peace on the Korean Peninsula”.

Lee’s government has taken other steps aimed at reducing hostilities, urging activists — many of them North Korean escapees — to refrain from launching balloons bearing anti-regime propaganda, electronic devices, medication and Bibles over the inter-Korean border.

Lee has blamed his rightwing predecessor Yoon Suk Yeol — who maintained a hard line against North Korea — of inflaming tensions, including with the year-long loudspeaker campaign. Seoul introduced the broadcasts in response to Pyongyang dispatching hundreds of balloons carrying bags of rubbish, soiled socks and underwear.

Recent South Korean broadcasts have consisted of a mix of K-pop, news bulletins and radio plays highlighting North Korean human rights abuses and the deaths of North Korean soldiers in construction accidents.

North Korea has retaliated with hours-long transmissions of howling sirens and sounds of scraping metal.

South Korea’s military on Thursday said North Korea had also ceased its loudspeaker broadcasts, in a corresponding move.

Leftwing presidents in South Korea have historically pursued closer engagement with North Korea, compared with a more confrontational stance often preferred by conservatives administrations.

In his inauguration speech last week, Lee declared that while Seoul would “maintain strong deterrence” against Pyongyang’s military threats, it would also “keep channels of communication with North Korea open and pursue peace on the Korean peninsula through dialogue and co-operation”.

Moon Jae-in, South Korea’s leftwing leader between 2017 and 2022, spent much of his presidency trying to secure a formal declaration to end the Korean war, which was fought from 1950 until the signing of an armistice agreement in 1953.

But doubts in Washington, Pyongyang and Beijing frustrated Moon’s peacemaking hopes and underscored the complex and competing interests that still plague the 70-year conflict.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has since renounced his country’s long-standing commitment to Korean unification, a new complicating factor that experts said would make any reconciliation efforts by Lee on the basis of common heritage even more difficult.

“Until recently, the generally accepted end state for the Korean peninsula on both sides has been a vision of unification,” said Jenny Town, a senior fellow at the Stimson Center think-tank in Washington.

“But now Kim has rejected that notion, and that has really changed the way that North Korea approaches the South,” she added. “Do they still see South Korea as playing a role in future negotiations, or have they written them off altogether, especially since the last leftwing administration promised so much and delivered so little?”

Analysts noted that North Korea’s nuclear weapons programme had continued to make progress irrespective of the party in power in Seoul.

Rafael Grossi, director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said this week that North Korea appeared to be building a new uranium enrichment site at its Yongbyon nuclear complex.

The US Congressional Research Service estimated in a report last month that Pyongyang had enough fissile material to produce up to 90 warheads, up from an estimate of up to 60 warheads in 2023.

US President Donald Trump has signalled his intention to revive his personal diplomacy with Kim, which collapsed after an unsuccessful summit in Hanoi in 2019.

In March, Trump claimed his administration was already in “communication” with Pyongyang, describing the North as a “big nuclear nation” and Kim as a “very smart guy”.

Pyongyang has not confirmed any contact with the Trump administration.

This week, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the president “remains receptive” to renewing his correspondence with Kim, following a report by Seoul-based media outlet NK News this week that North Korean representatives at the UN in New York had rejected a letter from Trump aimed at reopening communication.

The two leaders exchanged a series of letters during Trump’s first term before efforts collapsed over a deal on denuclearisation in exchange for sanctions relief.