The North vowed to resume its loudspeaker broadcasts. Will inter-Korean border tensions escalate again?

[EXPLAINER]

From 2024 to June 2025, North Korean loudspeakers along the inter-Korean border played sounds of howling animals and scraping metal through the night.

Residents of Paju in Gyeonggi, a city about an hour’s drive northwest of Seoul that borders North Korea, said that it sounded like ghosts wailing.

The noise stopped on June 12 last year, a day after the South halted its own propaganda broadcasts on President Lee Jae Myung’s orders. 

But Paju residents fear that the noise will soon return.

North Korea said on Oct. 21 that it will turn its loudspeakers back on before the end of this month. 

If true, that would mark the first broadcast in about 16 months. It would also undo one of President Lee’s main steps toward easing tensions with the North.

Border loudspeakers are a tool of psychological warfare.

For decades, the South used them to send news and K-pop to North Korean soldiers and residents near the border, who have little access to outside information. North Korea’s most recent broadcasts carried only noise, no message, which South Korean officials saw as an attempt to drown out Seoul’s broadcasts.

Seoul halted broadcasts from its fixed speakers and removed them — roughly 20 in total — last year; Pyongyang also stopped its broadcasts in return.

But this truce is now at risk, and the South Korean government has yet to agree on how to respond.

Why is North Korea trying to resume broadcasts now?

The North’s threat to resume broadcasts stems from a dispute regarding the border itself.

Since 2024, North Korea has been laying mines and building fences and antitank barriers to establish what it calls a “permanent border” with the South.

North Korean soldiers doing this work have repeatedly crossed the military demarcation line (MDL) — which lies within the demilitarized zone (DMZ) — that divides the two Koreas. South Korean troops have answered with warning broadcasts and warning shots. Warning broadcasts are aimed at North Korean soldiers who cross the line and are separate from propaganda broadcasts.

Then on Sept. 21, a land mine explosion south of the MDL in the western DMZ wounded three South Korean soldiers, two of whom sustained serious injuries.

The South’s military concluded that North Korean troops had planted the mine, but the North has repeatedly denied responsibility and called the incident a "fabrication" by the South.

Kim Yo-jong, the sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and a department director of the ruling Workers’ Party, first raised the idea of resuming broadcasts on Oct. 19, saying that Pyongyang would consider doing so in response to Seoul’s warning shots.

She claimed that South Korean troops had issued 2,870 loudspeaker warnings and fired 201 warning shots between Aug. 1 and Oct. 17.

On Oct. 21, after touring border fortification sites with Marshal Pak Jong-chon, the North’s top military official, she set a specific deadline.

“Within October, the loudspeakers for psychological warfare against the ROK will be in operation along the whole border,” she said, referring to the Republic of Korea, South Korea’s official name, in an English-language statement carried by the state-run Korean Central News Agency.

The next day, she said that the speakers “will be on standby in a matter of days.” 

What does the move signify?

During a parliamentary audit of South Korea’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Ministry of Unification on Tuesday, Unification Minister Chung Dong-young told lawmakers that the North appears intent on completing its border work “on schedule” and remains steadfast in its stance that the Koreas are “two hostile states.”

“The real intention [behind the North’s promise to resume broadcasts] is an indirect demand for our side’s restraint," said Yang Moo-jin, a distinguished professor at the University of North Korean Studies. "There would be no need for things such as readiness posture or loudspeaker on standby if only [we] showed restraint.”

He added that the North appears to hope to finish fortifying the entire border by next year without clashes with the South. 

Lim Eul-chul, a professor at Kyungnam University’s Institute for Far Eastern Studies, described the loudspeakers as the North’s fallback.

The North “ultimately chose loudspeaker broadcasts as its response, as it was unable to meet the South Korean military’s warning shots with force,” Lim said. “This way minimizes the risk of armed clashes while stirring grievances and anxiety in [South Korea’s] border areas to pressure the Lee administration.”

If Pyongyang resumes its broadcasts, it would act as a reversal of 2015, when Seoul turned on its speakers first.

“It seems as if Kim Jong-un judged that the benefits from [stirring] division within South Korean society […] are bigger than the losses from insults to the supreme leader,” Yang said, referring to the content of South Korean broadcasts.

The North has also shown its weapons.

On Sunday, photos from an observatory in Gyeonggi's Gimpo — a city west of Seoul that faces the North across the Han River estuary — captured seemingly 122-millimeter self-propelled guns on the coast of Kaepung County. The guns have a range of 15 to 24 kilometers (9.3 to 14.9 miles) and were aimed toward the South.

This was unusual, as artillery is normally kept hidden.

The pressure on Seoul comes as U.S. President Donald Trump has repeatedly said that he remains open to talks with Kim Jong-un without preconditions.

But the North has not responded to the United States’ outreach, and U.S. and South Korean officials have indicated there is little chance of a meeting within this year.

Asked on Oct. 19 whether he would meet the North Korean leader at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Shenzhen, China, next month, Trump said, “I’m not sure that anybody’s asking for a meeting.”

Why do border loudspeakers matter?

The two Koreas have used loudspeakers against each other for more than six decades.

Pyongyang began broadcasts in 1962. Seoul followed in 1963, when loudspeakers were installed along the southern side of the DMZ under then-President Park Chung Hee.

The speakers have been turned on and off depending on inter-Korean relations. In 2004, both sides stopped after military talks.

In August 2015, the South resumed broadcasts after a North Korean mine blast cost a South Korean soldier both legs. The North fired artillery at the speakers, and the standoff escalated to a semiwar that ended on Aug. 25, after which Seoul turned off its speakers again.

The speakers went back on after the North’s fourth nuclear test in 2016; off ahead of an inter-Korean summit in 2018; and on again in June 2024, after the North sent balloons carrying trash across the border.

Seoul’s broadcasts usually carried news and K-pop, which Pyongyang treated as a threat to its control over information. The South has broadcast K-pop since 2000, even playing BTS songs in 2024.

The North’s broadcasts in 2024 and 2025 were different from the usual propaganda. They played noise, such as animals howling and metal scraping, day and night. Pyongyang started them in July 2024, a month after Seoul resumed its broadcasts.

When President Lee took office in June last year, he promised to lower tensions with the North.

His administration halted the broadcasts on June 11, 2025. A few months later in August, it removed the fixed speakers along the border — a step that the government described as a key confidence-building measure.

Pyongyang stopped its own broadcasts in response, though Kim Yo-jong said that same month that the North had never removed them.

How will the South respond? 

South Korea’s agencies have given different answers.

The Ministry of National Defense said that Seoul should respond in kind but has not decided how.

“If the North does something, we think that we should naturally take proportionate measures as well. But nothing has been decided,” Defense Ministry spokesperson Chung Bin-na said on Oct. 22.

The ministry is considering reinstalling the fixed speakers or restarting 10 mobile speakers, according to local media reports.

Military leaders, however, raised their doubts about the loudspeakers’ effectiveness.

“Judging from previous cases, we assess the impact to be limited,” said Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Jin Yeong-seung at a parliamentary audit on Oct. 8.

The Unification Ministry sees resuming loudspeakers as something to avoid. 

“Just over a year ago, we blasted loudspeakers at each other, and residents of both the South and North went through pain that was hard to bear,” the ministry said in a statement on Oct. 22. “We should not repeat this past mistake.”

Unification Minister Chung called resuming the broadcasts “irresponsible and extremely dangerous” on Oct. 2.

Instead, he proposed that the two Koreas meet to remeasure the MDL, which South Korea, North Korea and the United Nations Command each draw differently.

The Blue House has made no official comment.

A National Security Council meeting on Oct. 22 ended without a conclusion, with ministries reportedly divided.

“Each ministry thinks differently, so President Lee appears to be continuing to deliberate [the matter],” an official from the ruling bloc said.

Conservative lawmakers have called for Seoul to turn its speakers back on since the mine blast.

Main opposition People Power Party (PPP) Rep. Kwon Young-se called Unification Minister Chung’s focus on dialogue “low-posture” and “humiliating” at Tuesday’s audit.

But opposition to the broadcasts crosses party lines.

On Oct. 6, the heads of 10 border cities and counties issued a joint statement against resuming them, citing residents’ safety and the local economy. The signatories included the heads of Ganghwa, Yeoncheon and Cheorwon counties, all members of the conservative PPP.

What happens next?

The North’s deadline for resuming broadcasts appears to be Saturday, the last day of October. 

As of Tuesday, the Joint Chiefs of Staff said that it had only seen routine maintenance of North Korean speakers.

There is no direct communication line to manage a clash if one occurs.

“The military communication channel between the two Koreas is completely cut off,” the Defense Ministry spokesperson said.

The ministry has proposed military talks to confirm the MDL’s location and restore communication lines, but the North has not responded. Meanwhile, Seoul has sent a letter to the UN Security Council president seeking Pyongyang’s responsibility and an apology for the mine blast.

“Accumulated fatigue among frontline troops of both Koreas, who have been on heightened guard duty day after day, is doubling the chance of an accidental armed clash,” Prof. Yang said.

Still, he noted that Kim Yo-jong said that the North was preparing for contingencies while exercising restraint. He said that her statement could imply that the North “could rethink their decision" depending on the South’s response.

Border residents are not waiting to find out.

About 10 residents of Tongil and Haemaru villages in Paju, which lie inside the civilian control zone just south of the border, held a press conference at the Unification Bridge on Monday. They called on both Koreas to keep their loudspeakers switched off.

“Even after coming back from farm work, I couldn’t rest because the loud sounds kept going,” one resident said.

If Pyongyang’s speakers do go on, Seoul will have to choose between the Defense Ministry’s “proportionate measures” and the Unification Ministry’s warning against repeating “past mistakes.”

BY SEO JI-EUN [[email protected]]