North Korea readies propaganda loudspeakers at border as landmine tensions rise with South

Loudspeakers set to return

Kim Yo Jong, the sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, said on Wednesday, 21 October, that Pyongyang would resume propaganda broadcasts toward South Korea in October. In a statement carried by the state news agency KCNA on Thursday, 22 October, she said the loudspeakers would be ready to restart within a few days along the entire border. Her announcement followed a visit to front-line positions with Marshal Pak Jong Chon, one of the senior military commanders serving her brother. KCNA first reported that the visit took place on Tuesday, and Kim later corrected the date in a statement issued early on Wednesday. She said new tactical units were taking up fresh positions and that the speakers would be operating across the whole border within October.

Fortifying the border

Kim described the frontier as sealed off and turned into a fortress, and said the work would create a lasting line that protects the North. The fortification drive began in April 2024, after Kim Jong Un dropped the long-standing goal of reunifying the peninsula, and Kim had already declared in December 2023 that the two Koreas were hostile states. North Korea now runs mines, barbed wire and anti-tank barriers along a border that is already one of the most militarised in the world. Pyongyang regards South Korea as its number one enemy, and Kim's remarks came while diplomacy with Washington remains stalled.

Warning shots and threat of return fire

Kim warned that if South Korean warning shots, which Seoul says are meant to push North Korean workers back across the line, caused real damage to North Korea's territorial security or its personnel, border guards would show no mercy. Seoul has needed to fire warning shots fifty times in 2026, according to South Korean figures reported by de Volkskrant. NK News reported that Kim complained of sixty warning shots fired from the South in three days during the week before 21 October, and that North Korean border troops could open fire directly if it happened again. The joint chiefs of staff said routine maintenance of the North's loudspeakers had been observed before Kim's statements.

Seoul's defence ministry said no decision had been made on any response, but it made clear the South would answer a restart.

naturally there would have to be a proportional measure

The September landmine blast

Three South Korean soldiers were wounded in September when mines exploded south of the military demarcation line, as they cleared a route toward a suspected North Korean minefield. Two of them were seriously hurt. Seoul and the United Nations Command, which oversees the 1953 armistice, concluded that the device was a North Korean anti-personnel mine and a breach of the armistice. An unexploded mine was also found, and investigators said the mines had been buried deliberately on the southern side of the line. Pyongyang denies any involvement and has called the episode a farce it staged itself. A special adviser to President Lee Jae Myung on defence policy had accused the North of planting the mines and urged it not to escalate through loudspeakers.

Why the speakers matter

Both Koreas used loudspeakers for psychological warfare for years, with the South playing K-pop and criticism of Pyongyang, and the North answering with noises such as crying animals and banging gongs. President Lee Jae Myung suspended South Korean broadcasts in June 2025 to ease tensions, and the North switched off its own speakers the following day. The South began dismantling its speakers in August 2025. Lim Eul-chul of Kyungnam University in Seoul told Reuters that the North's warning does not necessarily mean the speakers will switch back on, but it does force Seoul to ask whether its engagement policy should continue. Such a restart would end a pause of 16 months in loudspeaker exchanges.