Seoul Says It Will Respond to North Korean Threat to Restart Propaganda Broadcasts

South Korea said on Oct. 20 that it will respond sternly if North Korea resumes loudspeaker propaganda broadcasting and bolsters its military posture along ‌the border.

An exchange of threats and escalating tensions has raised the possibility of clashes along the heavily armed border and set back the diplomatic ​gains made shortly after South Korean President Lee Jae Myung took office in June 2025.

Seoul’s Defense Ministry expressed serious concern over Pyongyang’s repeated threats to deploy additional tactical strike weapons along the shared border as well as to resume the propaganda broadcasts aimed at the South.

‘Legitimate Measures’

The ministry said South Korea’s own broadcasts and ​warning shots near the Military Demarcation Line (MDL) were aimed at preventing incursions and forcing North ⁠Korean troops who crossed the line to withdraw, and were therefore a legitimate defensive measure.

“If North Korea uses our legitimate measures as a pretext to carry out further provocations, we ​will punish it resolutely,” the ministry said.

It urged Pyongyang to stop making what it labeled baseless claims, halt incursions across the MDL, and respond to ​diplomatic efforts to resolve differences between the neighboring states.

Although not actively involved in open conflict, North Korea and South Korea technically remain at war.

In recent years, tensions along the Korean border, one of the world’s most heavily fortified, have heightened as North Korea added mines, barbed wire fences, anti-tank barriers, and other fortification measures.

Seoul’s Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Jin Young-seung said in a separate statement reported by Yonhap News Agency that North Korea’s threats “cannot be accepted” and said that “our legitimate operational measures are defined as provocations and the responsibility for the escalation of the military tension has been shifted to our army.”

He added that he had visited a frontline army command and ordered operations aimed at strengthening Seoul’s initiative in the Demilitarized Zone.

Landmine Accusations

North Korea has been accused of installing mines and ​barriers along the border since April ​2024, although it has not admitted to planting land mines since 1998.

Seoul’s warning follows an accusation from North Korea’s Kim Yo Jong, the sister of leader Kim Jong Un, who said on Oct. 19 that the South Korean military had endangered North Korean soldiers by firing warning shots during Pyongyang’s work to fortify its military presence at the border.

In a statement reported by the Korean Friendship Association UK, she accused South Korea of firing shots and making warning broadcasts numerous times since August under “such an unreasonable pretext” that North Korean soldiers crossed the border. She added that such provocations “have gone beyond the red line” since the mine blasts.

A soldier stands at a North Korean military guard post next to loudspeakers, seen from Paju, South Korea, near the border with North Korea, on Feb. 26, 2026. AP Photo/Ahn Young-soon

‘A Grave Situation’

“A grave situation is prevailing along the southern border due to the reckless behavior of the ROK military gangsters,” Kim Yo Jong said, referring to South Korea by its official name, the Republic of Korea.

She said the North Korean military was considering “deploying more tactical strike means along the southern border as a preemptive and suppressive measure to deal with contingency, and of resuming the loudspeaker broadcasting against the ROK.”

North Korea’s threat to revive loudspeaker broadcasts risks reversing an important de-escalation measure that the South Korean president has named as an early achievement of his efforts to restart diplomacy with Pyongyang.

South Korea said this ⁠month that Pyongyang had deployed as many as 7,000 workers to the border area this year and that North Korean personnel had breached the MDL on about 50 separate occasions.

Seoul has detected changes in North ​Korea’s military activities close to border islands off its west coast between the two Koreas, according to Ju Il-Suk, commander of ​the South Korean Marine ⁠Corps, who made his remarks at a parliamentary hearing on Oct. 20, without providing details.

The South Korean government is working to boost its intelligence and surveillance capabilities in response, Ju said.

In 2015, landmine blasts blamed on North Korea maimed two South Korean soldiers and pushed the Koreas to the brink of an armed conflict, after South Korea resumed its front-line loudspeaker propaganda broadcasts for the first time in 11 years.

Loudspeaker broadcasts are one of the old-fashioned, Cold War-era psychological warfare campaigns the two Koreas have occasionally deployed against one another during periods of confrontation.