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South Korea To Restart Propaganda Loudspeakers Along Border

jones_supa writes: South Korea has said that it will resume anti-Pyongyang loudspeaker broadcasts this week along the heavily fortified border with North Korea in retaliation of Pyongyang's claimed hydrogen bomb test. The broadcasts will resume at noon on Friday, told Cho Tae-yong, deputy chief of the presidential office of national security. Cho added that South Korean troops maintain combat readiness and will sternly retaliate against North Korea if Pyongyang follows with a provocation. In August, South resumed the broadcasts for the first time in 11 years in retaliation for the North's land-mine attack that maimed two South Korean soldiers. The two sides later held days of intensive high-level talks and produced a deal in which South agreed to stop propaganda broadcasts unless an abnormal situation occurs. Which now did.

3 of 170 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Loudspeakers vs. nukes? by Fire_Wraith · · Score: 4, Insightful

    No, it's exactly the correct response. This is a classic pattern of saber-rattling and threatening by North Korea. It's not about an actual threat to use nukes - which, by the way, they already had. South Korea can't afford to not respond in some way, so what do they do? Something that really pisses the North Koreans off, but without risking pushing things into actual shooting - which happens very often along the border between the two. Yes, it's entirely about saving face. No, nobody expects it will actually change anything. Obama is pretty much doing what every president has done, which is maintaining US military forces in Japan and South Korea, and promising to defend them against any aggression from North Korea.

    But perhaps you think an active military response would be better? George W. Bush didn't seem to think so, even after North Korea blew past his "red line" on uranium enrichment and actually built the first of those bombs. Bottom line is, even the Bush administration didn't want a war in Korea, because it would be insanely bloody - and that's a best case scenario, nevermind that it was that way BEFORE North Korea had nukes. There just happens to be a major city of about 10 million South Koreans lying within artillery range of the border (where there just happens to be lots of artillery for that very reason).

  2. Original transcript by maestroX · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Comrades of the Soviet Union, there is no need for this senseless bloodshed between our nations.
    The German people are not your enemy.
    If you surrender, you will be treated well.
    You will be given plenty of good, hot food and warm clothing, and if wounded, proper medical treatment.
    The German army is your friend.

  3. Re:Loudspeakers vs. nukes? by myowntrueself · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The North Korean border is so close to Seoul that the North wouldn't even need to actually directly nuke Seoul; they could line up the nukes on THEIR OWN side of the border and let them off and Seoul would be totally fucked.

    --
    In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.