North Korea Threatens to Resume Loudspeaker Broadcasts and Add Border Weapons After Mine Blasts

On Monday, North Korea put a pair of old Cold War tools back on the table: loudspeakers aimed across the border and more weapons positioned along it. The threat came from Kim Yo Jong, the influential sister of leader Kim Jong Un, and it landed in a standoff that has been building since mine blasts on Sept. 21 injured three South Korean soldiers.

Earlier this month, Seoul formally attributed those blasts to mines planted by North Korea. It urged Pyongyang to apologize and to remove other mines it may have laid. The announcement followed a North Korean denial of responsibility, along with a warning of strong retaliation if the North was provoked.

Kim Yo Jong's statement on Monday turned the accusation around. She said South Korea had fired warning shots and issued warning broadcasts numerous times along the border since August, on what she called an unreasonable pretext that North Korean soldiers had crossed the line. Since the mine blasts, she said, those provocations have gone beyond the red line. She described a grave situation prevailing along the southern border and blamed what she called the reckless behavior of South Korean military gangsters.

She then laid out what the North Korean military is weighing: deploying more tactical strike means along the southern border as a preemptive and suppressive measure to deal with contingencies, and resuming loudspeaker broadcasts against South Korea. Her wording was that these steps were under consideration, not that they had been ordered.

The background is a border that is already among the most heavily fortified in the world. In recent years the North has added mines, barbed wire fences, anti-tank barriers and other front-line fortifications, in line with its policy of ending ties with the South. South Korea's military has said North Korean soldiers crossed the military demarcation line 50 times this year while doing that work, and that it answered with warning shots and warning broadcasts. It did not immediately respond to Monday's statement.

There is precedent for how quickly this kind of dispute can escalate. In 2015, mine blasts blamed on North Korea maimed two South Korean soldiers. Seoul then resumed front-line loudspeaker propaganda for the first time in 11 years, and the two Koreas were pushed to the brink of armed conflict. Loudspeaker broadcasts are a Cold War-style psychological warfare tactic the two sides have used on and off during confrontations.

The current silence on the border was a deliberate choice. After President Lee Jae Myung's liberal government took office last year, it halted the broadcasts as part of an effort to improve relations with the North, and North Korea later stopped its own.

The threat also arrives alongside a broader pattern. North Korea has recently stepped up weapons testing, likely in an effort to pressure the United States into bigger concessions, after President Donald Trump renewed efforts to restore diplomacy with Kim Jong Un.

What to watch now is whether Pyongyang follows words with action, by placing additional weapons near the border or switching the loudspeakers back on, and how Seoul responds. Both moves would bear on the larger question of whether talks between Washington and Pyongyang gain ground.