I doubt the North Koreans are going to care much about these loudspeaker broadcasts blaring again:
The presidential National Security Council (NSC) is expected to discuss a plan to resume propaganda campaigns via loudspeakers across the border with North Korea, in response to the North’s launch of some 600 balloons carrying trash to the South, a source close to the matter said Sunday.
The NSC meeting will be held Sunday afternoon and presided over by National Security Adviser Jang Ho-jin, according to the office of President Yoon Suk Yeol.
Earlier in the day, South Korea’s military said North Korea has been sending the trash-carrying balloons to the South since Saturday, despite the South warning it would take “unendurably” painful measures against such provocative acts.
It marks the first time the presidential office will hold an NSC meeting over the North’s balloon provocation.
It will be interesting to see how long the Kim regimes decides to keep launching these trash attacks:
North Korea has sent around 600 more balloons carrying trash to South Korea and continued jamming GPS signals for five straight days against the South, Seoul’s military said Sunday, as South Korea’s presidential office was considering taking countermeasures.
South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said it has detected more than 600 balloons that floated across the Military Demarcation Line separating the two Koreas and fell in different parts of the country between 8 p.m. Saturday and 10 a.m. Sunday.
The balloons carried various pieces of trash, such as cigarette butts, paper and plastic bags, just like the previous balloons, according to the JCS.
“About 20 to 50 balloons are moving per hour through the air and coming down in Seoul, Gyeonggi Province, North Chungcheong Province, and North Gyeongsang Province,” a JCS official said on the condition of anonymity, adding it is possible more balloons will be detected.
You can read more at the link, but these trash attacks are actually very clever. It is a cheap provocation with little threat of escalation that puts pressure on the Yoon administration to negotiate to stop them the longer they go on.
Since North Korea has never recognized the NLL from their point of view any South Korean movements along the NLL are violations they can use as an excuse for a provocation:
The current NLL is depicted with the Blue line and North Korea’s claimed NLL is depicted with the Red line.
North Korea threatened Sunday to take action against South Korea over what it claims are violations of the de facto western maritime border, ratcheting up tensions ahead of a trilateral summit in Seoul.
North Korea’s supreme military leadership instructed its army on Friday to take offensive action against the encroachment upon its sovereignty, North Korea’s Vice Defense Minister Kim Kang-il said, according to the country’s official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).
“We officially warn that we can never tolerate such continued encroachment on our maritime sovereignty and that we may exercise our self-defensive power on or under the water at any moment,” Kim said in a statement carried by the KCNA.
The statement came hours before South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol will have back-to-back bilateral talks with Chinese Premier Li Qiang and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida at the presidential office.
It is not like the ROK is going to invade North Korea so they are actually helping the ROK to defend itself:
A South Korean military official (R) shakes hands with his North Korean counterpart as they meet inside the Demilitarized Zone separating the two Koreas to take part in a project to establish a cross-border road, in this file photo provided by Seoul’s defense ministry on Nov. 22, 2018. (Yonhap)
North Korea has installed land mines on an inter-Korean road within the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) separating the two Koreas, a South Korean military official said Monday, the latest in a series of moves to shut down cross-border roads.
The military detected the North laying mines on the unpaved road inside the DMZ late last year near Arrowhead Hill in Cheorwon, 85 kilometers northeast of Seoul, according to the official.
The path was created under a 2018 inter-Korean military agreement to connect the South and the North for joint efforts to excavate remains of those killed near the hill during the 1950-53 Korean War.
Since late last year, the North has installed mines on all roads between the two Koreas once seen as symbols of inter-Korean reconciliation and cooperation.
This seems a weird way for North Korea to ship something to Russia via ship from China when both North Korea and China share a land border with Russia:
South Korea has seized a stateless vessel that allegedly engaged in activities in violation of U.N. sanctions in waters off the country’s south coast, security sources said Wednesday.
The 3,000-ton cargo ship DEYI, reportedly en route to Russia from North Korea via China, was captured in waters off Yeosu around Saturday, they added.
Thirteen were aboard the ship, including a Chinese captain and other Chinese and Indonesian crewmembers.
South Korea’s Coast Guard is said to have moved the ship and docked it in waters off the southeastern port of Busan after the crewmembers refused orders to stop the vessel.
The NLL in the Yellow Sea has always been a flashpoint that could lead to a wider conflict. The ROK defense minister is clearly letting the North Korean regime know that any provocation they launch could lead to a wider conflict:
Defense Minister Shin Won-sik visits a memorial for 46 sailors killed in the 2010 sinking of the ROKS Cheonan corvette on the 14th anniversary of the incident at Baengnyeong Island in the Yellow Sea on March 26, 2024, in this photo provided by his office.
Defense Minister Shin Won-sik on Tuesday called for defending the western sea border against enemy threats on the anniversary of the 2010 sinking of a South Korean warship by a North Korean torpedo attack.
The ROKS Cheonan corvette sank near the western Northern Limit Line (NLL), a de facto inter-Korean sea border, in March 2010, after a North Korean midget submarine fired a torpedo at it, killing 46 sailors.
“North Korea is claiming the NLL is a ghost line without legal grounds and is continuously trying to nullify it,” Shin said in his phone talks with the commanding officer of a new frigate named after the torpedoed warship.
“Protect the Yellow Sea and the NLL that the comrades before you have defended by giving up their lives.”
In turn, Cdr. Park Yeon-soo, the commanding officer, vowed to avenge the sailors of the Cheonan if the enemy undertakes a provocation. Park served on the previous warship and is a survivor of the 2010 attack.
Shin’s call came after North Korean leader Kim Jong-un last month rejected the NLL as a “ghost” line and called for using force against South Korean vessels violating its waters.
You can read more at the link, but it will be interesting to see if the Kim regime tries to see whether or not the ROK government is bluffing on their hardline rhetoric. Kim Jong-un got away with sinking the Cheonan back in 2010 and may think he could get away with such a provocation today as well.
The Korea Times recently interviewed three Korean foreign policy experts about what they thought how a second Trump presidency would impact South Korea. What I found most interesting was not the Trump talk, but how these experts believe negotations with North Korea should continue to be centered around trying to get them to denuclearize:
Q: North Korea’s threat has become sophisticated. And the North had continued to build up its nuclear capabilities to solidify its status as a nuclear power. Given this, do you believe denuclearizing North Korea is achievable? Will there be a need to discard denuclearization negotiations and adopt a new format of disarmament talks?
Kim: Denuclearization is and should continue to be an end goal to achieve. This is a daunting task unprecedented in the history of nuclear arms control and disarmament, but it cannot be given up. If we give up denuclearization, North Korea will be recognized as a de facto nuclear state. And this likely means the beginning of the collapse of the NPT. This is a nightmare for all. If North Korea becomes a nuclear weapon state, this would agitate South Koreans, and public opinion would evolve even stronger in favor of South Korea’s nuclear armament. If South Korea arms itself with nuclear weapons, other countries in the region, such as Japan and even Taiwan, will also feel the need to follow suit. If this happens, not only the U.S. but also China will face unmanageable proliferation risks.
A nuclear-weapon-free North Korea may sound unfeasible at the moment, but we need to keep trying to make it happen. For that, we need to prevail on North Korea to come back to negotiation on the basis that everything should be on the table. This means both of our and their concerns must not be precluded from any negotiation.
Ahn: The importance of the NPT cannot be overstated. When the treaty was proposed by the U.S. in 1960’s, the former Soviet Union was fully supportive because there was a shared belief that the international community needed such a scheme to prevent proliferation. The first survey that asked South Koreans about their opinions about South Korea’s possession of nuclear weapons was released in 2022 and at that time, 76 percent of South Koreans were in favor. The U.S. officials and think tank experts whom I met were stunned whenever they heard about the survey results. Eventually, South Koreans’ overwhelming support for nuclear armament became a type of leverage and convinced the U.S. to team up with South Korea to create the Nuclear Consultation Group (NCG). The NCG is a very useful institution for South Korea and we need to make the most of it to deter North Korea’s threat.
You can read much more at the link, but I just don’t see how you negotiate to achieve something that is not going to happen. Kim Jong-un is not going to give up his nuclear weapons, it is his ultimate regime survival trump card. Plus his nuclear weapons program to continues to make his regime relevant internationally. He has already turned down a deal for denuclearization in return for dropping of sanctions and nothing has changed in the intervening years that would change his mind.
Here are the latest comments from President Yoon on North Korea:
President Yoon Suk Yeol said Wednesday that the North Korean regime is an “irrational group” that has legalized the preemptive use of nuclear weapons and will likely carry out multiple provocations to interfere with South Korea’s April parliamentary elections.
Yoon’s remark came as North Korea has ratcheted up tensions on the Korean Peninsula with a series of weapons tests since the start of the year, including back-to-back cruise missile launches last Wednesday, Sunday and Tuesday. (…..)
“Such actions themselves are anti-national and anti-unification, and provocations and threats that run counter to history,” Yoon said while presiding over the annual central integrated defense council meeting at the former presidential compound of Cheong Wa Dae.
“The North Korean regime is an irrational group that has legalized the preemptive use of nuclear weapons as the only (country) in the world to do so. If it was a sensible regime, it would abandon its nuclear weapons and search for a way for its people to live, but the North Korean regime is bent only on maintaining its hereditary, totalitarian regime,” he said.
I think what President Yoon gets wrong is that the Kim regime is rationale from their perspective. It makes sense for them to continue to conduct weapons tests and maintain their status as a global threat to be taken seriously. Why would the U.S. make any serious concessions to North Korea during any potential negotiations if North Korea did not have proven ICBM and nuclear capabilities? These capabilities have also become a source of national pride for North Korea, a country that has little to be proud of.
It also makes sense that the Kim regime is going to continue to conduct provocations before April’s parliamentary elections. To get to any potential negotations where concessions favorable to North Korea are made they need to get Yoon and other conservatives out of office. The parlimentary elections are the first step to politically neutering ROK conservatives and set conditions for another Korean leftist to become the next President.
North Korea ultimately wants to get sanctions dropped while giving up little to nothing in return. They almost got this deal during the Moon administration and South Korea and the Trump administration in the U.S.
President Yoon best hope that Kim Jong-un does not call him on this threat. For example if North Korea was to sink a ROK naval ship would President Yoon order the ROK military to then launch an attack against a North Korean naval base to sink multiple ships in response? If he does things can quickly escalate:
President Yoon Suk Yeol vowed Tuesday to punish North Korea multiple times as hard in the event it carries out a provocation against South Korea, after North Korean leader Kim Jong-un called for defining South Korea as a “primary foe and invariable principal enemy.”
Kim issued the call during a parliamentary meeting Monday, saying the country should revise its constitution to codify the new definition of South Korea and the North’s commitment to “completely occupying” South Korean territory in the event of war.
“The current Republic of Korea government is different from any previous government,” Yoon said during a Cabinet meeting, referring to South Korea by its formal name. “Our military has an overwhelming response capability. … Should North Korea provoke us, we will punish them multiple times as hard.”
Just another example of why the Kim regime cannot be trusted to keep to agreements:
North Korea breached the recently scrapped 2018 inter-Korean military accord approximately 3,600 times, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said Monday.
The number of violations by North Korea, counted from the time the deal was reached six years ago, was announced following three consecutive days of North Korean provocations along the sea boundary.
The JCS in Seoul told the press that due to North Korea’s firing of artillery shells near South Korean border islands over the past three days, there are now no areas where military measures are halted.
“Rather than reacting to the enemy actions on a case-by-case basis, our troops will be carrying out drills according to our own plans in the northwestern islands,” it said.
