S.korea halts border propaganda broadcasts
S.korean protesters denounce US anti-missile system ahead of North-south summit
SEOUL: South Korea on Monday silenced its battery of giant loud speakers that blast messages at the North’s border soldiers, in a conciliatory gesture before Friday’s historic inter-korean summit.
Despite tentative hopes of a breakthrough over Pyongyang’s nuclear arsenal, Us president donald trump warned that a solution to the North Korean crisis remains a “long way” off, as he prepares for his own planned meeting with Kim Jong Un.
Observers are weighing the sign ii can ce of an array of headline-grabbing offers this year from the north− including discussions with arch foes Seoul and Washington, and most recently a weekend promise to suspend nuclear and missile tests − after months of surging tensions.
The South’s President Moon Jae-in on Monday hailed Pyongyang’s promise to stop major weapons trials as “signiicant.” He is due to meet Kim on Friday in the truce village of Panmunjom at the heavily-fortiied frontier.
In preparation for the talks − only the third of their kind since the end of the 1950-53 Korean War − the South switched off its propaganda broadcasts, which pre- viously illed the air in the Demilitarised Zone with news, music and exhortations to the North’s soldiers to defect.
The North plays propaganda of its own. Construction trucks moved into a south Korean base housing a US anti-missile system on Monday, infuriating villagers opposed to its deployment, two days after North Korea vowed to suspend nuclear tests and ahead of a North-south summit.
Thousands of riot police moved in to disperse the protesters who tried to keep supplies from reaching the site of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) system in the southern city of Seongju, just days before the irst NorthSouth summit since 2007.
“A peace treaty is being discussed... There is no more North Korea (nuclear threat) as an excuse (for deployment of THAAD).
“We can neither understand nor accept construction plans to operate the THAAD,” the THAAD residents’ committee said in a statement.
The system is aimed at defending against an attack by North Korea which has been pursuing nuclear and missile programmes in deiance of UN Security Council resolutions, prompting threats of war from both the North and the United States.
But tensions have eased in recent months, with the North participating in the Winter Olympics in the South and a summit planned between North and South this week and between the North and the United States in May or June.