North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s sister has rebutted South Korea’s claims that Pyongyang removed some of its propaganda-blasting loudspeakers along the border.<\/p>\n
North Korea has “never removed” the speakers and “are not willing to remove them”, Kim Yo Jong said in a statement published by state media KCNA on Thursday.<\/p>\n
“We have clarified on several occasions that we have no will to improve relations with [South Korea],” she said, adding that this stance “will be fixed in our constitution in the future”.<\/p>\n
South Korea’s military said earlier this week that North Korea had removed some of its loudspeakers along the border – days after South Korea dismantled some of its own.<\/p>\n
Kim, the deputy director of North Korea’s propaganda department, said Seoul’s claim was an “unfounded unilateral supposition and a red herring”. <\/p>\n
Besides propaganda messages, South Korea’s broadcasts often blasted K-pop songs across the border. while North Korea played unsettling noises such as howling animals.<\/p>\n
South Korean residents living near the border had complained that their lives were being disrupted been by the noise from both sides, sometimes in the middle of the night.<\/p>\n
Pyongyang considers Seoul’s propaganda broadcasts an act of war and has threatened to blow up the speakers in the past.<\/p>\n
South Korea’s speaker broadcasts resumed in June 2024 after a six year pause under impeached president Yoon Suk Yeol who took a more hardline stance against the North. <\/p>\n
They were restarted after Pyongyang began sending rubbish-filled balloons to the South in response to increased tensions. <\/p>\n
The relationship appeared to have thawed under new President Lee Jae Myung, who campaigned on improving inter-Korean ties.<\/p>\n
South Korea halted its broadcasts along the demilitarised zone shortly after Lee took office in June, in what the country’s military described as a bid to “restore trust” and “achieve peace on the Korean Peninsula”.<\/p>\n
Still, ties between the two neighbours remain uneasy. Earlier this week, North Korea warned of “resolute counteraction” to provocations ahead of joint military drills between South Korea and the US. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s sister has rebutted South Korea’s claims that Pyongyang removed some of its…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":68437,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-68436","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68436","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68436"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68436\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68437"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}