S. Korea to resume propaganda broadcasts against N. Korea's trash balloons
South Korea will install loudspeakers near the border and resume propaganda broadcasts Sunday, the presidential office said, in response to North Korea's repeated launches of balloons filled with trash, Yonhap reports.
The National Security Council convened an emergency meeting and approved the measure, a day after the North floated the balloons in retaliation against South Korean civic groups' recent launch of balloons carrying anti-Pyongyang propaganda leaflets across the border.
"Although the measures we are taking may be difficult for the North Korean regime to endure, they will deliver messages of light and hope to the North Korean military and citizens," the presidential office said in a release.
"We make it clear that the responsibility for any escalation of tension between the two Koreas will lie entirely with North Korea," it said.
The meeting, presided over by NSC adviser Chang Ho-jin, came a week after the NSC members discussed responses against Pyongyang's balloon campaigns and GPS jamming attacks in the Yellow Sea.
After the last meeting, Chang said the government will take an "unbearable action" against the North's provocations.
President Yoon Suk Yeol on Tuesday endorsed a motion to fully suspend the 2018 inter-Korean tension reduction pact, which would pave the way for resuming propaganda broadcasts near the border.
Following the full suspension of the Comprehensive Military Agreement, the South Korean military vowed to resume all military activities near the Military Demarcation Line and its northwestern border islands for the first time in more than five years.