North Korea threatens South with military action over loudspeakers

North Korea has threatened to take military action against South Korea if Seoul fails to remove the loudspeakers it has recently reinstalled at the two country’s border to broadcast anti-Pyongyang messages.

“The resumption of the broadcasting is a direct action of declaring a war against the DPRK (North Korea),” the Front Command of the Korean People’s Army (KPA) said on Saturday in a statement carried by the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).

The loudspeakers have been reportedly broadcasting propaganda messages against Pyongyang across the border since August 10. South Korea had suspended broadcasting anti-Pyongyang messages through loudspeakers since 2004.

The statement further said that Seoul’s failure to immediately stop the broadcasts would lead to “an all-out military action of justice to blow up all means for ‘anti-north psychological warfare’” on the borders.

“They should not forget that the KPA military action means indiscriminate strikes which envisage even possible challenge and escalating counteraction,” the statement added.

Seoul links the broadcasting of the anti-Pyongyang messages to a landmine explosion that wounded two South Korean soldiers patrolling along the inter-Korean demilitarized zone earlier this month. Seoul says the mines were planted by North Korea, a claim Pyongyang has denied.

The Korean Peninsula has been locked in a cycle of military rhetoric since the Korean War, which lasted from 1950 to 1953 and ended in an armistice. No peace deal has been signed since then, meaning that Pyongyang and Seoul remain technically at war.