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By Jun Ji-hye
North Korean front-line units resumed broadcasting propaganda using loudspeakers in response to the South's resumption of similar broadcasts following the recent landmine explosions inside the Demilitarized Zone blamed on Pyongyang.
However, military officials here say that the quality of the North Korean loudspeakers is so bad that it is almost impossible to understand what they are exactly saying.
"South Korean soldiers can hardly understand the messages from the North. It just sounds like a drone," a military official told reporters on the condition of anonymity.
Officials said loudspeakers being used by North Korean soldiers are too old to deliver messages clearly over the border.
The unclear sound is one of the reasons why South Korean units failed to clarify when exactly the North resumed its broadcasting, they said.
South Korea restarted the loudspeaker propaganda broadcasting on Aug. 10 in the border area for the first time in 11 years after confirming that the reclusive state was blamed for the landmine explosions that maimed two South Korean soldiers early this month.
The broadcasting is part of a psychological warfare program, delivering outside news to be heard by North Korean soldiers and border-area residents. Pyongyang has reacted sensitively in the past to such tactics, apparently concerned about the possible effect it might have on its people.
The military authorities understood that the North began the anti-South broadcasts a few days after the South restarted its equivalent action. The sound from the North was initially deflected along the eastern border, but it has been also heard in the central forward area and the western front, officials noted.
They said the broadcasting from the North will have little effect on the South because its loudspeakers do not perform well. So, military authorities believe that the primary purpose of the North's broadcasting is to drown out the sounds from the South, rather than psychologically influence South Korean soldiers and residents.
The South's loudspeakers can be heard 24 kilometers away at night and 10 kilometers away during the day, officials said.
The broadcasting is expected to influence residents in the North's border city of Gaeseong, just 10 kilometers from the Military Demarcation Line (MDL), as well as hundreds of thousands of North Korean soldiers along the border.
The broadcasts of the South and the North also differ in their content, officials added. Those of the isolated state are reportedly focused on political propaganda that slanders the South Korean system and promotes the North Korean system.
The South's broadcasting includes a greater variety of content, not only about the purge of the North's high-ranking military officials and the superiority of democracy, but also international news, weather information and music.
The two Koreas agreed to suspend the broadcasts in 2004 during general-level military talks.
But Seoul announced a plan to resume the broadcasting in 2010 after Pyongyang's deadly torpedoing of the South Korean Navy frigate Cheonan, which killed 46 sailors. At the time, the North threatened to shoot at the speakers, and the broadcasting did not resume.
On the morning of Aug. 4, three North Korean-made wooden box antipersonnel landmines exploded in the South-controlled area of the DMZ, when eight South Korean officers were on a regular patrol there.
Follow Jun Ji-hye on Twitter @TheKopJihye
