North Korea's Kim Yo Jong Vows to Resume Border Propaganda Broadcasts Against South Korea

On Wednesday, Kim Yo Jong, the sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, announced that Pyongyang will bring back its anti-Seoul propaganda broadcasts along the heavily armed border with South Korea before the end of October. She made the announcement after visiting frontline areas where North Korean soldiers are reinforcing the boundary. It revives a psychological warfare tactic at a moment of rising tension, following land mine blasts that injured three South Korean frontline soldiers.

Kim Yo Jong is widely seen as the second most powerful official in Pyongyang. She toured the border zone with Marshal Pak Jong Chon, one of her brother's top military officials. She described the fortification work as a "sacred and great undertaking" that supports the leader's policy of permanently severing ties with South Korea. Kim Jong Un has declared the South his most hostile adversary, and the posture comes amid a broader diplomatic stalemate with Washington.

The work itself is substantial. North Korea has been adding mines, barbed wire fences, anti-tank barriers and other fortifications to a border that was already among the most heavily armed in the world. "Our tactical hunting teams are taking new positions," she said, "and within October, the loudspeakers for psychological warfare against the ROK will be in operation along the whole border." ROK is the initialism for South Korea's formal name, the Republic of Korea.

She also renewed a threat of retaliation. South Korea fires warning shots that Seoul says are meant to push North Korean soldiers doing fortification work back across the line. If those shots cause "actual harm to our territorial security and our service persons' safety," she warned, North Korean border guards "will show no mercy for the armed gangsters bereft of reason." Speaking to soldiers, she said the military leadership wanted "those rogues" to know that new firepower units had taken their firing positions, and she invoked her brother's order to make the border with the enemy "eternally impregnable."

The immediate backdrop is the Sept. 21 blasts. After an inspection with the U.S.-led United Nations Command, Seoul formally blamed mines planted by North Korea, and urged Pyongyang to apologize and clear its remaining mines. North Korea denied responsibility and warned of strong retaliation if provoked.

The two sides also dispute whether the line is being crossed at all. South Korea's military says North Korean soldiers crossed the military demarcation line 50 times this year during fortification work, and that it answered with warning shots and broadcasts. Kim calls those claims a "false pretext" and says provocations have gone "beyond the red line" since the mine blasts. During Tuesday's inspection, Pak accused the South of "deliberate, premeditated and absurd" claims meant to shift blame, threatened an "overwhelming response," and said, per the state-run Korean Central News Agency, that "our army knows where our borderline is better than any others." The agency first dated the visit as Tuesday, and Kim later corrected it to early Wednesday in a separate statement.

In Seoul, Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Jin Yong-Sung called Kim's threats "intolerable" and ordered the military to "sternly respond" to any potential provocation from the North.

Loudspeaker broadcasts are a Cold War-era tool the two Koreas have used against each other in periods of tension. South Korea's liberal government under President Lee Jae Myung halted its broadcasts after taking office last year to improve relations, and the North later stopped its own. Kim Jong Un has since cut off all diplomacy and cooperation with the South and called it a permanent enemy, as nuclear negotiations with Washington remain stalled for years.

What to watch now is whether the loudspeakers actually start up before October ends, and how the South answers, along with whether further warning shots are fired along the fortified line.