North Korea to restart border loudspeakers by end of October

North Korea will switch on propaganda loudspeakers along its entire border with South Korea before the end of October, Kim Yo-jong, a senior Workers’ Party official and the sister of leader Kim Jong-un, said in a statement carried by state news agency KCNA on Oct. 21.

The announcement ends a pause that began in June 2025, when both Koreas stopped their broadcasts, and it comes a month after a land mine blast in the demilitarized zone injured three South Korean soldiers, two of them seriously, on Sept. 21.

“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,” Kim said, according to Yonhap’s report in The Korea Times. ROK is the abbreviation for South Korea’s formal name, the Republic of Korea.

Kim called the move the “most just measure” and an “appropriate response.” She said South Korean forces “committed provocative warning loudspeaker blaring and shots again in at least two spots today,” according to the JoongAng Daily.

The South Korean military has said North Korean troops working on border fortifications have repeatedly moved close to or across the military demarcation line, and that it responded with warning broadcasts and warning shots. South Korea’s military and the UN Command concluded that North Korean anti-personnel mines planted south of the line caused the Sept. 21 blast, a violation of the Armistice Agreement. Pyongyang has denied responsibility.

On Oct. 22, Kim issued a second statement saying new “counter means” would be on alert along the southern border and that the loudspeakers “will be on standby in a matter of days,” The Korea Times reported. She warned that South Korea would “face the most horrible and distressing situation” if it made a mistake, whether intentional or not.

She also told Kim Byung-joo, a special adviser to the South Korean president on defence policy who had criticized the threat and called for an apology, to “shut his mouth at once.”

South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said no movement to install new weapons or systems has been identified. Capt. Jang Do-young, a spokesperson, said that at a briefing on Oct. 22. The Joint Chiefs said North Korean forces were doing routine maintenance on front-line loudspeakers before Kim’s statements. A defence ministry spokesperson, Chung Binna, said North Korea “must stop making groundless claims and incursions across the MDL,” referring to the military demarcation line.

The South’s defence ministry earlier vowed to respond decisively to further provocations, and the Joint Chiefs chairman, Gen. Jin Yong-sung, ordered troops to respond sternly.

Kim defended the fortification work, saying: “If the border is fortified, the danger of military conflict in this area will undoubtedly be eliminated.” North Korea began reinforcing the border with barbed-wire fences, mines and anti-tank barriers in April 2024, after Kim Jong-un declared the two Koreas “two states hostile to each other” the year before.

South Korean President Lee Jae-myung ordered Seoul’s broadcasts stopped on June 11, 2025, and the North’s ended the next day, according to the Korea Times and a commentary in The Diplomat. We could not read the Diplomat piece in full, so that detail is attributed to its summary only.

The account of the front-line events rests on statements by the North Korean and South Korean militaries, neither of which has been independently verified. We found no statement from the Canadian government on the dispute. Canada has diplomatic relations with South Korea and no embassy in Pyongyang, and Global Affairs Canada’s travel advice for the Korean peninsula is on travel.gc.ca.

North Korea has not said which days the broadcasts will start. Regional tension has also featured in our coverage of Japan’s Yasukuni offering and the protests it drew from Seoul and Beijing this month.

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Via The Korea Times (Yonhap) and the JoongAng Daily.