SEOUL, South Korea — The ear could make out the occasional blare of K-pop lyrics, interspersed with verbal messaging, under a gray sky and over the blast of offshore wind.
The tinny sounds emanated from military loudspeakers on the northern rim of Gyodong Island, beyond frozen paddy fields and between the razor-wire fences, watchtowers and bases along the Yellow Sea.
A few miles north was a gray blur: the shores and hills of North Korea. Eerie sounds — howls and white noise, like the soundtrack to a horror movie — could be heard occasionally through the wind.
Gyodong, an hour’s drive northwest of Seoul, can be reached via a barricaded road bridge manned by soldiers.
It is one of multiple locations along the 160-mile-wide Demilitarized Zone that South Korean civilians can visit to gaze at and listen to their mysterious northern neighbor.
A poignant poem was attached to the fence of a lookout platform beside a fixed telescope. “Separated only by a river, yet it seems to be a thousand miles away,” it read. “That is my home, I see it, yet it can’t be reached.”
That was February. Today, with summer approaching Korea, military loudspeakers on Gyodong Island and across the southern half of the DMZ are silent.
Halting propaganda broadcasts toward North Korea is the first gesture by President Lee Jae-myung, who took office on June 4, to thaw cross-DMZ relations.
“Broadcasts were stopped in all sectors as of the afternoon of June 11,” a military official told the South Korean daily The Chosun Ilbo. “This is part of a public pledge to pursue peace on the Korean Peninsula and rebuild trust between the two Koreas.”
Given the policy back-and-forth of administrations in Seoul and Washington over the past decade and Mr. Lee’s beneficial new alliance with Russia, it is unclear whether North Korean leader Kim Jong-un will reciprocate.
North and South, back and forth
Mr. Lee’s predecessor, impeached President Yoon Suk Yeol, showed no interest in engaging the North. That led to deteriorating relations and a war of nerves over the DMZ.
In response to balloons carrying anti-regime messaging, which activists in the South sent north over the border, the North dispatched balloons filled with trash into the South.
Drones intruded, and banks of loudspeakers opened fire. K-pop and news reports were a mainstay of the southern broadcasts, while North Korea beamed bizarre noises.
“They used very weird sounds to block the loudspeakers from South Korea,” said Jee Hong-ki, a retired South Korean colonel who offers tourist trips to the DMZ. “It had no meaning; it was only noise, like a jet engine, that gave civilians [in the border area] headaches at night.”
Mr. Yoon’s stance contrasted with the approach of his predecessor, President Moon Jae-in, who met with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and oversaw a military deconfliction agreement in and over the DMZ.
Mr. Moon’s 2017-2022 term overlapped President Trump’s first term. After Seoul laid diplomatic groundwork, Mr. Trump became the first U.S. president to meet a sitting North Korean leader at a summit in Singapore in 2018.
Hopes of a new era soon evaporated. After the failure of a second North Korea-U.S. summit in Hanoi, Vietnam, in 2019, Pyongyang-Washington relations deteriorated.
Inevitably, so, too, did Pyongyang-Seoul relations.
Although Mr. Lee and perhaps Mr. Trump may want to reset relations with Mr. Kim, whether Mr. Kim is interested is a different question.
“Turning off the speakers is a signal from the new government that they want to take a different approach from the previous government, but I don’t know if North Korea will reciprocate,” said Shin Hee-seok, a legal adviser to the Transitional Justice Working Group. This nongovernmental organization monitors human rights violations with a focus on North Korea. “The geopolitical situation has changed so much.”
Seeds of discontent
The collapse of the Soviet Union four decades ago made North Korea more reliant than ever on China. Some analysts say it fueled a sense of resentment among North Korean leaders.
The reason for Mr. Kim’s 2013 execution of his uncle, Jang Song-thaek, is widely believed to be the uncle’s close ties with China.
However, the Ukraine war has reshaped the geopolitical landscape.
Since Mr. Kim and similarly isolated Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a comprehensive strategic partnership last year, North Korea has reduced its need for friends abroad.
In return for massive supplies of munitions and a division-sized troop deployment of crack North Korean troops to help defeat a Ukrainian offensive into Kursk oblast, the Kremlin has reciprocated.
Moscow has offered Pyongyang diplomatic cover at the U.N. Security Council and is thought to offer military technology support, though details are shady.
Ukrainian sources say North Korean tactical ballistic missiles have attained increased accuracy, possibly because of Russian guidance technologies.
Russia-style air defense systems have been spotted on new North Korean destroyers, and Moscow has indicated that it is sharing Iran-originated drone technologies with Pyongyang.
Mr. Shin said Beijing is losing influence and must compete with Moscow to retain leverage in Pyongyang.
A less-isolated North Korea diminishes the appeal of a thaw in relations with Seoul and Washington.
“My personal view is that North Korea is in a very different place than it was 10 years ago, and there are not that many incentives to really engage the U.S., let alone South Korea,” said Mr. Shin. “We will see.”
“Loudspeakers have some importance, so it is a good signal that the South has this policy,” said Mr. Jee. “But if we turn off, will they turn off? The key to everything is Kim Jong-un.”
• Andrew Salmon can be reached at asalmon@washingtontimes.com.
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