On October 21, after inspecting fortification work alongside North Korea’s southern border, Kim Yo Jong, the sister of North Korean chief Kim Jong Un, introduced that “inside October, the loudspeakers for psychological warfare towards the ROK shall be in operation alongside the entire border.” (ROK refers back to the Republic of Korea, South Korea’s formal identify.)
Two days earlier, Kim Yo Jong had mentioned Pyongyang was contemplating the step, together with deploying extra “tactical strike means” close to the border. As a rationale, she cited the habits of South Korean troops close to the border, claiming that they had issued 2,870 warning broadcasts and fired warning pictures on 201 events between August 1 and October 17.
South Korea has no giant loudspeakers left on the border; it took them down in August 2025 as an indication of goodwill. The Ministry of Nationwide Protection mentioned that the warnings Kim referred to have been issued by smaller audio system at guard posts as a defensive measure towards North Korean troopers crossing the Army Demarcation Line (MDL).
If the North begins broadcasting, South Korea’s army mentioned it could think about restarting its personal loudspeakers on the precept of proportional response.
The loudspeaker broadcasts started in 1963, when North Korea started utilizing the device and South Korea responded in variety. The primary bout lasted over 9 years, with broadcasts solely switched off in November 1972. North Korea resumed broadcasts in 1980; the loudspeaker contest lasted even longer this time, till 2004.
However since then, loudspeaker use has settled right into a sample: South Korea resumed loudspeaker broadcasts in response to North Korean actions in 2015, 2016, and 2024. The newest spherical led to 2025, with the Lee administration’s unilateral determination to dismantle South Korean audio system. This time, North Korea is the one resuming broadcasts, citing a rising dispute over the MDL.
Since 2015, Seoul has used loudspeakers when it needs to answer North Korean provocations with out resorting to drive. In August 2015, South Korea’s protection minister known as the broadcasts legit retaliation after mines that Seoul mentioned the North had planted within the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) critically injured two South Korean troopers. South Korea additionally used loudspeaker broadcasts to answer North Korea’s nuclear take a look at in 2016, and once more in 2024 when North Korea despatched balloons full of trash and feces throughout the border.
There’s a motive South Korean governments turned to loudspeakers. A broadcast is non-lethal and might be switched off at will, but it targets one thing Pyongyang guards intently: its management over data. South Korean broadcasts have carried information, climate forecasts, and pop music to North Korea’s front-line troopers, and officers mentioned in 2015 that the sound might carry 24 kilometers at evening. In June 2017, a North Korean soldier who crossed to a South Korean guard put up on the central entrance mentioned the broadcasts had made him determine to defect.
Whereas South Korea thought of the broadcasts to be a proportional response, North Korea sees them in a different way. Pyongyang known as the 2015 resumption “a direct provocation of conflict.” The North turned its personal audio system on simply days after Seoul did, although South Korean officers mentioned they have been so outdated that their messages have been practically unimaginable to know. “It simply appears like a drone,” one official mentioned.
On August 20, 2015, South Korea’s army mentioned North Korean forces had fired towards a loudspeaker website in Yeoncheon, north of Seoul, and South Korean artillery answered with dozens of 155 mm rounds. Pyongyang denied firing, issued an ultimatum to cease the broadcasts and declared a “quasi-state of conflict.” The standoff closed on August 25, 2015 with a joint assertion wherein the North expressed remorse over the mine blasts and the South agreed to cease broadcasting “except an irregular state of affairs happens.”
That “irregular state of affairs” got here in January 2016, when North Korea carried out an underground nuclear take a look at. Days later, South Korea restarted its loudspeaker broadcasts. This time, the broadcasts went on for over two years. Seoul solely switched them off on April 23, 2018, 4 days earlier than an inter-Korean summit. The ensuing Panmunjom Declaration dedicated each side to cease all hostile acts alongside the MDL, together with loudspeaker broadcasts, from Could 1.
When Seoul turned the audio system again on in June 2024, after suspending the September 2018 inter-Korean army settlement. South Korea held that North Korea had already voided the settlement by its trash balloons and over provocations. South Korea’s broadcasts in 2024 included BTS songs, regional climate, and market costs, together with a message urging North Korean troopers laying mines to flee what it known as a lifetime of slavery.
North Korea answered not with propaganda however with sheer noise: gunshots, screams, eerie laughter, and appears like howling wolves. Noise ranges on Ganghwa Island, about two kilometers from the North, reached 80 decibels late at evening. To many, North Korea’s objective was merely to torment South Koreans.
South Korean legislation acknowledged the hurt being carried out. A December 2024 modification to the Framework Act on Civil Protection permits the state to compensate individuals harmed by enemy actions that fall wanting a civil protection emergency. A decree issued in Could 2025 included “noise broadcasting” among the many “hazardous acts” it covers, alongside balloons, taking pictures or shelling, and drones. In July 2026, border counties started taking claims, with funds decided by the variety of days residents lived with the noise.
Beforehand, North Korea and South Korea stopped their loudspeaker broadcasts by bilateral settlement, after discussions. However South Korea ended its final spherical unilaterally. New President Lee Jae-myung ordered the broadcasts stopped on June 11, 2025; the North’s broadcasts ended the subsequent day. In August 2025, the army started dismantling its mounted loudspeakers in what the protection ministry known as “a sensible measure aimed toward serving to ease tensions with the North.” Seoul mentioned it had not consulted Pyongyang.
Pyongyang rejected any suggestion of reciprocity. After South Korea’s army reported that the North was eradicating a few of its personal audio system, Kim Yo Jong mentioned: “We now have by no means eliminated loudspeakers put in on the border space and usually are not prepared to take away them.” A few week later, the truth is, two new North Korean audio system went up reverse the South Korean border counties of Cheorwon and Hwacheon.
Now North Korea has declared that it’s going to resume broadcasts. In that case, the brand new spherical of loudspeaker use shall be completely different from current historical past. In 2015, 2016, and 2024, Seoul started broadcasting first; this time Pyongyang has declared its intention to take action, in response to alleged South Korean provocations. That is regardless of repeated efforts on the a part of the Lee administration in Seoul to point out its goodwill towards the North.
Since Kim Jong Un declared the 2 Koreas hostile states in December 2023, North Korean troops have fortified the DMZ, laying mines and constructing roads, fences, and what look like anti-tank obstacles. In September 2026, two mine explosions alongside the DMZ injured three South Korean troopers. Seoul mentioned the mines had been laid through the “so-called border fortification works” since 2023 – and that they have been planted south of MDL that separates the 2 Koreas.
North Korean troopers working close to the road often cross it, as evidenced by the current mine incident. South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Workers counted about 50 crossings in August and September 2026; South Korean troops responded with warning broadcasts and warning pictures.
Kim Yo Jong, nonetheless, insisted that “our troopers have by no means crossed the border.” There could also be disagreement over the place, precisely, the MDL is located. In that case, will probably be tough to resolve; Pyongyang ignored Seoul’s November 2025 provide of army talks to set “a transparent reference line for the MDL.”
Kim’s statements framed the loudspeaker broadcasts as in regards to the border quite than propaganda. She additionally issued a risk, saying that North Korean troops would present “no mercy” if South Korean warning pictures ever harmed a North Korean solider. Kim additionally reiterated her brother’s imaginative and prescient that the MDL is now “a everlasting line by no means to be crossed.”
So long as North Korean troops hold working alongside – and crossing – the MDL, South Korean warnings are prone to proceed. Meaning North Korea’s responses, together with the broadcasts, will as properly. Seoul has additionally reserved the fitting to hold out a “proportional response” to North Korean broadcasts, though no particular motion has been chosen but.
Over the long term inter-Korean relations are prone to be formed by interactions alongside the MDL, which Pyongyang now calls a everlasting border and Seoul nonetheless treats as a brief demarcation line set by the armistice. Stopping an unintended conflict is now an pressing activity.
With inter-Korean hotlines silent since April 2023, South Korea’s Unification Ministry has known as for reconciling the 2 sides’ understandings of the MDL and organising a communication system to handle it. Up to now, nonetheless, Pyongyang has refused to interact. That leaves South Korea with few choices for responding to North Korean escalations with out elevating the chance of battle.