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.

Comments

it was an inevitable progression, to say the least

[nimbius]

south korea: things have been peaceful lately, lets turn off those loudspeakers. im sure the residents near the border would like a good nights sleep and the electric bill is getting a little out of hand...
DPRK: AT LAST! we have, under our glorious leaders infallable guidance, finally created and detonated a HYDROGEN BOMB. cower before the might of our glorious nuclear harbinger of the wests final demise!
south korea: ...Get Psy on the phone. Ask his producer what its going to cost to get a chipmunk christmas remix of Gangnam Style at every border outpost by tomorrow morning.
DPRK: the glory of allmighty leader cannot be denied! his wisdom and purity will cleanse the west in a fiery blaze of enlightenment and retribution for the...
south korea: pick up a copy of whatever Biebers got out this year while you're at it...

Re:it was an inevitable progression, to say the le

[MiniMike]

south korea: a chipmunk christmas remix of Gangnam Style at every border outpost by tomorrow morning.

Might constitute a war crime (torture, superfluous injury, unnecessary suffering), as technically they're still at war.

south korea: pick up a copy of whatever Biebers got out this year while you're at it...

Yeah, definitely a war crime...

Re:Loudspeakers vs. nukes?

[Fire_Wraith]

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).

Re:Ineffective?

[Anubis IV]

My wife was telling me about a story she read regarding a North Korean defector who fled across the border to China and then eventually made it to the West. The thing that convinced him he needed to leave? A soldier from the other side of the DMZ accidentally dropped nail clippers and didn't care enough to come back and get them later. When he realized that something as "incredible" as nail clippers were basically worthless to the other side's soldiers, he knew he had been lied to about how things were outside of his country.

Take it with the requisite grain of salt, but it's an interesting anecdote, nonetheless.

Original transcript

[maestroX]

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.

Re:Again?

[Fire_Wraith]

It's strange if you think their priority is the advancement and well-being of their people and nation as a whole.

On the other hand, if you believe that their goal is maintaining the Kim family dynasty, and the power of the North Korea military elites, then it's not so strange.

Re:it was an inevitable progression, to say the le

[jandersen]

... south korea: pick up a copy of whatever Biebers got out this year while you're at it...

Look, let's not go overboard, OK? I know, the set off a H-bomb, but we should be proportionate in our response.

Re:it was an inevitable progression, to say the le

[dcw3]

... south korea: pick up a copy of whatever Biebers got out this year while you're at it...

Look, let's not go overboard, OK? I know, the set off a H-bomb, but we should be proportionate in our response.

Well, we already sent Rodman, we have to escalate.

Re:Loudspeakers vs. nukes?

[myowntrueself]

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.

Re:Land Mine ... Attack?

[Imazalil]

That whole landmine story still doesn't sit well with me. It's not very good border security if a couple guys with a backpack full of mines can just wander around un-noticed.

Yeah, I get that they're set up against a large full scale invasion, but you'd think with all the fancy technology they have on display, and especially with previous small-team infiltrations, they would be on top of things. (I know, I know, armchair quarterbacking.)

Re:If they use that nuke Pyongyang will be gone in

[dcw3]

If they use that nuke Pyongyang will be gone in hours.

So many of you idiots make claims like this, but you're talking out of your ass. Nobody is going to bomb the hell out of a city full of civilians. We won't be having another Hiroshima, at least from this side. And, for those who believe we'd just steamroll over the country like it was Iraq, you don't know NK.

Re:Provocaliation

[bobbied]

Wars have started for less than that.... Wait, Oh yea, technically all we have is a cease fire, the Korean war is still technically on.

Look, this is really about Littl' Un staying in power. What matters here is how this is played in the NK government miss-information machine and accepted by the population. What SK is suggesting involves bypassing the iron fisted control of information that NK must maintain to keep Littl' Un in power, at least in a small way for a small part of NK's population which happens to be limited to the border guards for the most part. SK is doing next to nothing, but it's making a show of it.

In the end, nothing will really happen except there will be a renewed hate of Bibber and Britney in the north.. Maybe that draws some mortar fire? But likely not.

Re:Ineffective?

[Bosconian]

Oh, my goodness! I can't even imagine the state of the populace's finger and toenails. Are there long lines and rations to use the services of the state-sponsored manicurists? Is there a National Policy to advise the glorious citizens as to what their nail states should aspire to be?

We must liberate this country of janky fingers, ingrown cuticles and hangnails in all haste!

God Bless

Re:Ineffective?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not that fun music is an acquired taste, it's that grumpy people don't like having fun.

I think it comes from spending a lifetime performing grueling work under an oppressive regime (whether it be the USSR or a Baptist church) they don't want to believe that all of that sacrifice was for nothing but to amuse some dictator, so they will believe that fun is wrong.

Also, rock and fun upbeat pop music only overlap a *tiny* bit.

The People's Grammar

[UberVegeta]

"... unless an abnormal situation occurs. Which now did."

North Korea's fiery rhetoric may project some laughably inaccurate claims, but at least the grammar is better than that of a Slashdot editor.

Re:Ineffective?

[lgw]

why would South Korea want to annex a basketcase like Nork?

For the same reason West Germany rushed to embrace East German despite the real setback that caused to their economy: compassion.

Re:If they use that nuke Pyongyang will be gone in

[laurencetux]

when your puppet has a bad case of Black Mold then you either

1 roast said puppet (china deals with NK)
2 hand the puppet to somebody with a can of Gas and a lighter (china tells the US Have Fun and Watch Your Splash Damage)

Re:If they use that nuke Pyongyang will be gone in

[SuiteSisterMary]

Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney explains why, after kicking Iraq out of Kuwait, it would be fucking stupid to invade Iraq:

Because if we'd gone to Baghdad we would have been all alone. There wouldn't have been anybody else with us. There would have been a U.S. occupation of Iraq. None of the Arab forces that were willing to fight with us in Kuwait were willing to invade Iraq. Once you got to Iraq and took it over, took down Saddam Hussein's government, then what are you going to put in its place? That's a very volatile part of the world, and if you take down the central government of Iraq, you could very easily end up seeing pieces of Iraq fly off: part of it, the Syrians would like to have to the west, part of itâ"eastern Iraqâ"the Iranians would like to claim, they fought over it for eight years. In the north you've got the Kurds, and if the Kurds spin loose and join with the Kurds in Turkey, then you threaten the territorial integrity of Turkey. It's a quagmire if you go that far and try to take over Iraq. The other thing was casualties. Everyone was impressed with the fact we were able to do our job with as few casualties as we had. But for the 146 Americans killed in action, and for their familiesâ"it wasn't a cheap war. And the question for the president, in terms of whether or not we went on to Baghdad, took additional casualties in an effort to get Saddam Hussein, was how many additional dead Americans is Saddam worth? Our judgment was, not very many, and I think we got it right.[

Lets not forget that Iran is a theocracy due directly to the US of A overthrowing the elected government. They all knew exactly what would happen in Iraq back in the 90s, and they knew again in the 2000s. Only this time, they also ready to make it profitable.

Re:If they use that nuke Pyongyang will be gone in

[Talderas]

Or you could know your history and remember why the Korean war ended the way it did.

Ah right, you mean how MacArthur advanced further into North Korea than Truman authorized which prompted a Chinese counterattack turning what was a victory into a retreat that lead to the eventual borders between North and South Korea.