North Korea Vows to Resume Border Propaganda Broadcasts as Tensions Rise With South Korea

On Wednesday, Kim Yo Jong walked the front-line areas of North Korea's border with Marshal Pak Jong Chon, one of her brother's top military officials, and watched troops at work on the fortifications. Afterward she announced that North Korea will bring back its anti-Seoul propaganda broadcasts along one of the most heavily armed borders in the world. She is the sister of leader Kim Jong Un and his top spokesperson on Washington and Seoul.

The announcement comes as tensions rise after land mine blasts on Sept. 21 injured three South Korean front-line soldiers. Following an inspection with the U.S.-led United Nations Command, Seoul formally blamed mines planted by the North. It urged Pyongyang to apologize and clear the mines that remain. North Korea denied responsibility and warned of strong retaliation if provoked.

In her Wednesday remarks, Kim Yo Jong said that "within October," loudspeakers for psychological warfare against the South would be operating along the whole border. She said hunting teams were taking new positions. In a follow-up statement Thursday, she said the North would put "new counter means" on alert along the border and have its loudspeakers on "standby" within days. She also renewed a threat to retaliate against any South Korean provocation aimed at the fortification work.

That work has been steady. North Korea has been adding mines, barbed-wire fences, anti-tank barriers and other defenses to the frontier as Kim Jong Un pushes a hard line toward Seoul. Kim Yo Jong called it a "sacred and great undertaking" that supports her brother's policy of permanently severing ties with the South. He has declared South Korea his most hostile adversary, amid a broader diplomatic stalemate with Washington over nuclear negotiations. She told soldiers that her brother had ordered the border with the "enemy" made "eternally impregnable."

The flashpoint is South Korea's warning shots. Seoul says they are meant to push North Korean soldiers doing fortification work back across the line. South Korea's military says those soldiers crossed the military demarcation line 50 times this year, and that it answered with warning shots and broadcasts. Kim Yo Jong rejects the claim as a "false pretext" and says provocations have risen "beyond the red line" since the blasts. She warned that if the shots cause actual harm to North Korea's territorial security or its personnel's safety, border guards "will show no mercy." Pak denied that North Korean troops breach the border, saying, according to the state-run Korean Central News Agency, that the army knows where its borderline is better than anyone. He accused the South of making "deliberate, premeditated and absurd" claims to shift blame, and threatened an "overwhelming response."

South Korea's response so far is firm but vague. Defense Ministry spokesperson Chung Binna said Thursday that Seoul would need to take "proportionate measures," without saying what is under consideration. Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Jin Yong-Sung called Kim's threats "intolerable" and ordered the military to "sternly respond" to any provocation. One small wrinkle: KCNA first dated Kim's visit to Tuesday, then corrected it to early Wednesday in a separate statement.

Loudspeaker broadcasts are a Cold War-era psychological warfare tool that the two Koreas have used on each other during periods of tension. They had gone quiet. President Lee Jae Myung's liberal government halted South Korea's broadcasts after taking office last year, hoping to improve ties, and the North later stopped its own. Kim Jong Un has since cut off all diplomacy and cooperation with the South.

What to watch now is whether the loudspeakers actually switch on before October ends, what Seoul's proportionate measures turn out to be, and whether warning shots along the line lead to harm on either side.