President Yoon Suk Yeol of South Korea entirely revoked a 2018 military agreement aimed at lowering tensions with the North on Tuesday in reaction to Pyongyang’s last-week bombardment of balloons carrying garbage.
The pact was struck during a time of improved relations, but it was already essentially null and invalid because Seoul had suspended it in part last year in response to North Korea’s launch of a spy satellite into space, which led Pyongyang to declare that it would not honor the accord at all.
Security officials in Seoul, however, claimed that adhering to even a fraction of the agreement was impeding their capacity to counter the North’s provocations, which included last week’s almost 1,000 balloons that carried refuse across the border, including cigarette butts and dung.
President Yoon “has just approved the ‘September 19 (2018) Military Agreement Suspension Proposal’,” which the cabinet had already signed off on, his office said in a statement.
Yoon’s approval means the agreement is suspended with immediate effect.The move will allow the South to resume live fire drills and re-start loudspeaker propaganda campaigns along the border with the North.
Since the 1950s–1953 Korean War, the South has employed loudspeaker campaigns as a psychological warfare technique in response to what it views as significant North Korean provocations.
For instance, it last used them in 2016, following Pyongyang’s fourth nuclear test, and terminated them a few days prior to the historic 2018 inter-Korean summit, at which a military agreement to reduce tension was inked.
Using massive megaphones, South Korea is broadcasting everything from K-pop to anti-regime propaganda into areas near the demilitarized zone that separates the two countries, which are still technically at war, as part of the loudspeaker operations.
The broadcasts infuriate Pyongyang, which has previously threatened artillery strikes against the loudspeaker units unless they were switched off.
Pyongyang said the trash balloons were retaliation for similar missives sent northwards by South Korean activists.
On Monday, a South Korean anti-Pyongyang group disclosed that on May 10, they had launched balloons into the North bearing over 2,000 USB flash drives filled with songs by South Korea’s big trot singer Lim Young-woong and other K-pop and K-dramas.
When it comes to its citizens’ access to South Korea’s thriving popular culture, the hermit nation is exceedingly cautious.
A United Nations study claims that Pyongyang passed legislation in 2020 that may result in life imprisonment or even the death penalty for anyone found in possession of or disseminating a significant volume of South Korean media content.
Seoul has also said Pyongyang attempted to jam GPS signals for several days last week.
Pyongyang called off the balloon bombardment Sunday, saying it had been an effective countermeasure — but warned that more could come if South Korean activists resumed their campaigns against the North.
