S Korea mutes propaganda broadcasts over border
SOUTH KOREA has stopped broadcasting propaganda across the border with the North for the first time in two years, ahead of the first inter-korean summit in a decade.
Yesterday’s move came as Moon Jaein, the South Korean president, praised the North for pledging to freeze its programme of missile tests.
North and South Korea are in the final stages of preparations for a summit between Mr Moon and Kim Jongun at the border village of Panmunjom on Friday. Yesterday, Seoul announced that the historic meeting would include an official dinner.
Parts of the event will be broadcast live, and it was also reported that Kim may make the last leg of the journey to the venue, on the south side of the border zone, on foot.
“We hope this decision will lead both Koreas to stop mutual criticism and propaganda against each other and also contribute in creating peace and a new beginning,” the South Korean defence ministry said about the decision to halt the broadcasts.
North Korea has about 40 of its own propaganda loudspeakers at the border, and was expected to silence most of them last night. In February, the North lowered the volume of its border propaganda after the Winter Olympics opening ceremony in South Korea’s Pyeongchang. The South’s propaganda broadcasts were stopped at midnight, the defence ministry said, without specifying whether they would resume after the Kim-moon summit.
It is the first time in more than two years the South Korean broadcasts, which include a mixture of news, pop music and criticism of the North Korean regime, have been halted. Broadcasts were stopped in mid-2015 only to be restarted in January 2016 following North Korea’s fourth nuclear test. Pyongyang has conducted two more nuclear tests since then.
The inter-korean talks, and a planned meeting between Kim and Donald Trump in the coming weeks, have raised hopes of an easing in tensions that reached a crescendo last year amid a flurry of North Korean missile trials and its largest nuclear test.
On Saturday, North Korea pledged to
halt nuclear and missile tests and said it was scrapping its nuclear test site to instead pursue economic growth and peace. After initially welcoming the statement, Mr Trump sounded a more cautious note on Sunday. “We are a long way from conclusion on North Korea, maybe things will work out, and maybe they won’t – only time will tell,” he wrote on Twitter.
Mr Moon, the South’s president, said yesterday that the move was “a green light that improves the prospect of success of the inter-korea and North-us summits”.
South Korean companies with exposure to the North rallied after Pyongyang’s weekend announcement.
Shares of Good People and Shinwon Corp, which used to operate factories in North Korea’s Kaesong industrial region near the Demilitarised Zone, surged 8 per cent and 15 per cent respectively.