Seoul, North Korea: North Korea will place anti-South Korea loudspeakers on standby along its entire border within days and has put unspecified new countermeasures on alert, Kim Yo Jong, the powerful sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, said on Thursday, as tensions between the two countries continue to rise.
Kim warned Seoul of “the most horrible and distressing situation” if South Korea continued what Pyongyang describes as interference in the North's internal affairs.
In a statement on Wednesday, following a visit to border fortification sites with senior military officials, Kim said North Korea would activate loudspeakers used for psychological warfare against South Korea across the border by the end of October. In a follow-up statement on Thursday, she said the equipment would be placed on standby within days and that unspecified new countermeasures had also been put on alert.
North Korea has been reinforcing its border with mines, barbed-wire fences, anti-tank barriers and other fortifications. The work is part of Kim Jong Un's policy of permanently severing ties with South Korea, which he has declared his most hostile adversary amid a prolonged diplomatic stalemate with Washington.
During her visit to the front-line areas with Marshal Pak Jong Chon, one of her brother's senior military officials, Kim described the fortification work as a “sacred and great undertaking”.
“Our tactical hunting teams are taking new positions, and within October, the loudspeakers for psychological warfare against the ROK will be in operation along the whole border,” she said, referring to South Korea by the initials of its formal name, the Republic of Korea.
Kim also accused South Korean troops of conducting warning broadcasts and firing warning shots at multiple locations near the border. Seoul has said the warning shots were legitimate defensive measures intended to force North Korean soldiers involved in fortification work back across the military demarcation line.
She warned that if South Korean warning shots caused “actual harm to our territorial security and our service persons' safety”, North Korean border guards “will show no mercy for the armed gangsters bereft of reason”.
North Korea has accused South Korea of escalating provocations since land mine explosions injured three South Korean front-line soldiers. Pyongyang has denied responsibility for the blasts and warned of strong retaliation if provoked.
Following an inspection with the US-led United Nations Command, Seoul formally blamed North Korean-planted mines for the September 21 explosions and urged Pyongyang to apologise and clear remaining mines.
North Korea's state-run Korean Central News Agency initially reported that Kim's border visit took place on Tuesday, but she later corrected the timing to early Wednesday in a separate statement.
During the visit, Kim told soldiers that North Korea's military leadership had stressed the need to ensure South Korea understood that new firepower units had taken up firing positions. She also referred to her brother's order to make the border with the “enemy … eternally impregnable”.
South Korea's military has said North Korean soldiers crossed the military demarcation line 50 times this year while carrying out fortification work, prompting Seoul to respond with warning shots and broadcasts. Kim has dismissed the South's claims of border crossings as a “false pretext” and said its provocations had increased “beyond the red line” since the mine blasts.
South Korea's Defence Ministry spokesperson Chung Binna said on Thursday that Seoul would need to take “proportionate measures” in response to North Korea's moves along the border, but did not specify what steps were being considered.
South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, Jin Yong-Sung, described Kim's threats as “intolerable” and ordered the military to “sternly respond” to potential North Korean provocations.
During the border inspection, Pak accused South Korea of making “deliberate, premeditated and absurd” claims to shift blame for the rising tensions and threatened an “overwhelming response” to any South Korean provocation. He also denied that North Korean soldiers were crossing the border during fortification work, saying, “our army knows where our borderline is better than any others”, according to KCNA.
Loudspeaker broadcasts are among the Cold War-era psychological warfare tactics that the two Koreas have periodically used against each other during periods of heightened tensions. South Korea's liberal government, led by President Lee Jae Myung, halted its broadcasts after taking office last year in an effort to improve ties with the North, which subsequently stopped its own broadcasts.
Kim Jong Un has cut off diplomacy and cooperation with South Korea in recent years, declaring it a permanent enemy as a years-long stalemate in nuclear negotiations with Washington continues.
(With agency inputs from AP via PTI and Reuters)