South Korea removing loudspeakers on border with North

AFP | Seoul

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South Korea said yesterday t was removing loudspeakers used to blare K-pop and news reports to the North, as the new administration in Seoul tries to ease tensions with its bellicose neighbour.

The nations, still technically at war, had already halted propaganda broadcasts along the demilitarised zone, Seoul’s military said in June after the election of President Lee Jae Myung.

It said in June that Pyongyang stopped transmitting bizarre, unsettling noises along the border that had become a major nuisance for South Korean locals, a day after the South’s loudspeakers fell silent.

“Starting today, the military has begun removing the loudspeakers,” Lee Kyung-ho, spokesman of the South’s defence ministry, told reporters on Monday.

“It is a practical measure aimed at helping ease tensions with the North, provided that such actions do not compromise the military’s state of readiness.”

All loudspeakers set up along the border will be dismantled by the end of the week, he added.

He did not disclose the number to be removed, but a Yonhap news agency report -- which the defence ministry declined to verify -- said it was about 20.