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North Korea Expands Retaliatory Loudspeaker Propaganda (yonhapnews.co.kr)
jones_supa writes: North Korea has expanded its own loudspeaker broadcasts along the inter-Korean border as a counteraction to South Korea's retaliatory broadcasts critical of the communist nation, sources said Monday. In retaliation for North's nuclear test last Wednesday, South resumed its anti-Pyongyang broadcast campaign two days later, a form of psychological warfare detested by the communist country, where outside information is tightly blocked out. "The North initially operated its own loudspeakers at two locations and has now expanded to several locations," a government source said. "In fact, the anti-South loudspeaker broadcasts appear to be coming from every location where we are broadcasting." The North Korean broadcasts are not clearly audible from the South Korean side of the border, but mostly deal with internal propaganda messages and music promoting its leader Kim Jong-un. "We are not sure if it's an issue of electric power or the performance of the loudspeakers, but the sound is very weak," another government source said.
Have the South Koreans made any notable technological advances in increasing the maximum range of a speaker or making highly directional speakers that can reach Pyongyang from across the DMZ?
Well, I guess we could discuss the possible reasons why their speakers aren't loud enough? That's nerdy, right?
They're not doing this to convince the people in the south of anything. They're just drowning out the South Korean propaganda on their own side.
That's why they don't care that the sound doesn't carry across the border; it just needs to be louder where their own people can hear it.
Everyone knows that Asians don't make good drivers.
To reenforce the idea that they're just as good, not to the south koreans, but to their own.
The penis, mightier than the sword.
My dad's neighbor's Wifi SSID was "penismightier". It surprised me the first time I saw it (this is a pretty conservative Mormon area) until I manged to mentally reparse it. I pointed it out to my dad, who said he'd been laughing about it every time he saw it, ever since they set it up. My mom finally mentioned it to the neighbors one day and they were shocked and horrified. They had never noticed the "phallic" parse, believe it or not. They changed it immediately.
When I toured North Korea a few years ago I once saw (and got a neat video of) a truck driving around with massive loudspeakers blaring propaganda, and that was far from the border.
But what do the North Koreans think that they can possibly achieve by broadcasting propaganda to the South?
You might be surprised. There are a fair number of North Korea sympathizers in South Korea, especially in the Jeonju region, where the Kim family originates. Before and during WW2, Kim Il Sung led the resistance to the Japanese, and many people, North and South, saw him as a national hero. When the Americans occupied South Korea in 1945, they kept the existing government, which consisted entirely of Koreans that had collaborated with the Japanese, and were detested by most Koreans. When the Korean war started in 1950, many southerners rallied to Kim's effort to unify the nation. Following the war, there was still many people in SK that saw NK as the "true" Korea. Also, NK was actually more prosperous than SK until around 1970 or so, and both governments were repressive. After that, the SK economy took off, they became a democracy, and support for NK faded, but it has not entirely disappeared.
They (the North) are just making noise so their own people cannot hear the propaganda from the south. Is this so hard to understand? EVERYTHING the North does is about how it plays INTERNALLY which is why they come across so nutty to the outside world. NK must carefully control the "truth" as it is commonly understood within their country.
If the reality of the situation where ever understood by the North Korean masses they would be in open revolt and fleeing their country. If they ever caught on that the majority of the world isn't starving and generally laughs at their "supreme leader" as being a fat slob who keeps his people poor and destitute in his quest for keeping power it would all be over in days. That North Korea is generally considered a joke, and that it's military power, though dangerous, is out matched, out gunned and out manned. That the minefields in the DMZ do more to keep citizens in North Korea than keeping military forces from the south out. That they are starving, only because the "Little Un" must stay in power.
So they are pointing their speakers the same direction as the South's are. They are all pointed north. Which is why you cannot hear them in the South, because it wouldn't matter and North Korea knows it.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101