Less than a week after the appointment of a new leadership hierarchy in North Korea, the South Korean defense minister said his country’s military would initiate a new and expanded propaganda war if provoked by the North.
After six years of quiet along the border, South Korea has reinstalled 11 sets of psychological warfare loudspeakers, South Korean Defense Minister Kim Tae-young said on Tuesday in Seoul. He said his ministry had switched its transmitters to the easier-to-receive AM band and was ready to send thousands of AM radios and propaganda leaflets across the border using helium balloons.
A continuing balloon and leaflet campaign by South Korean civilians has angered the North Korean government, which suggests that it has been effective. The leaflets ridicule the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-il, and call for people in the North to rise up. North Korea insisted that the leaflet issue be put on the agenda of recent bilateral military talks at the border village of Panmunjom.
If the South undertakes a new propaganda war, the North has warned that its artillery would fire across the border to destroy the loudspeakers. It also said it would shut down a jointly operated industrial complex in the North Korean town of Kaesong.
North and South Korea agreed in 2000 to dismantle the loudspeaker systems along the border and to stop radio transmissions. There have been no loudspeaker blasts since 2004, although South Korea made a show of putting some speakers in place in May, after the March sinking of a South Korean naval vessel, the Cheonan, that killed 46 sailors. The North has denied any involvement.
Meanwhile, an aide to South Korean President Lee Myung-bak said on Wednesday that the North’s nuclear program was moving ahead “at a very fast pace.”
Lee’s secretary, Kim Tae-hyo, said: “We have judged that North Korea is currently operating all its nuclear programs, including highly enriched uranium processing and the nuclear facility in Yongbyon.”
He was quoted on Wednesday in the newspaper JoongAng Daily, the International Herald Tribune’s publishing partner in South Korea.
A newly released satellite photo taken on Sept. 29 of the Yongbyon reactor complex in North Korea shows construction activity and two new buildings next to a cooling tower that was demolished by North Korea in 2008 as part of a denuclearization accord. A report discussing the photo from the Institute for Science and International Security — a private group in Washington that tracks nuclear proliferation — said there was no indication that the North was rebuilding the tower.
“In addition, the new excavation activity appears to be more extensive than would be expected for rebuilding the cooling tower,” the report said. “But the actual purpose of this excavation activity cannot be determined from the image and bears watching.”
A spokesman for the South Korean Foreign Ministry said officials were monitoring the activity at Yongbyon.
The North Korean regime, which tries to isolate its population from outside news, is sensitive to psychological operations tactics.
North Korea experts in Seoul found the timing of the statements on a possible propaganda war by the South Korean officials to be provocative and puzzling, notably because they come so soon after a major leadership shuffle that essentially anointed Kim Jong-il’s youngest son, Kim Jong-un, as his heir apparent. Kim Jong-un was made a four-star general, despite little military experience, and he was given two significant political posts in the Workers’ Party.
“Is it good policy to start a propaganda war right away against the North Korean regime and its new leadership?” said Paik Hak-soon, a North Korea scholar at the Sejong Institute near Seoul.
“Is it good for South Korean security interests? It’s not the right time for this. It’s an offensive by the more conservative elements in the government,” he said.
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