In the past, North Korea’s loudspeakers had broadcast propaganda, insulting the government in Seoul as a “puppet” of the United States or encouraging South Korean soldiers to defect to the “paradise” in the North.
In a press briefing on Monday, the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff said the decision to completely stop the broadcasts would hinge on North Korea’s actions, and that a comprehensive review would be needed.
The military’s decision to halt the broadcasts was also driven partly by the fact that North Korea had also stopped sending its trash-laden balloons across the border since late last year.
But regardless of the Lee government’s softer approach, analysts expect North Korea to show continued hostility toward the South.
In particular, Pyongyang’s move to eliminate ‘puppet’ – a derogatory term used in North Korean propaganda to describe South Korea – from its state publication Rodong Sinmun suggests a fundamental shift in its approach toward the South, say analysts.
“This can be interpreted as suggesting North Korea’s abandonment of its will to unify the Korean Peninsula,” Lim Su-jin, a researcher at the Institute for National Security Strategy, argues in a June 10 report.
In addition, North Korea’s recent reports on South Korea are shifting from direct criticism to “strategic indifference,” focused primarily on its relations with the United States, with the word ‘America’ showing the largest increase in all South Korea-related coverage by Rodong Sinmun from January to March, Lim said.
