North Korea Puts Border Loudspeakers on Standby, Kim Yo Jong Warns Seoul

North Korea will place loudspeakers aimed at South Korea on standby along the entire border within days, Kim Yo Jong said on Thursday, in a second statement within hours that pushed tensions on the peninsula to their highest level since President Lee Jae Myung took office.

"Our new counter means will get into the alert for duty at all the southern border line and the loudspeakers against the ROK will be on standby in a matter of days," Kim said in a statement carried by the state news agency KCNA. She warned Seoul of "the most horrible and distressing situation" if it kept interfering in the North's affairs.

Two statements in two days

On Wednesday evening, after touring border fortification sites with senior military officials, Kim said the loudspeakers would be switched on by the end of October and that tactical units had moved into new positions. She accused South Korean troops of making warning broadcasts and firing warning shots near the border, and said North Korean forces would "mercilessly eliminate" South Korean troops if that fire harmed North Korean territory or personnel.

The statements answer a South Korean defence policy adviser who accused the North of planting the mines that wounded South Korean soldiers and told Pyongyang not to raise tensions with loudspeaker broadcasts. Seoul says a border blast last month seriously wounded two of its soldiers and blames North Korean mines. Pyongyang calls the charge a fabrication, and Seoul says its warning shots were legitimate and defensive.

Seoul's dilemma

South Korea's military and Unification Ministry urged the North to return to talks. The defence ministry said Seoul would take proportionate measures if the North acted on its threats, but that no decision had been made. Lim Eul-chul, a professor at Kyungnam University in Seoul, said the warnings did not necessarily mean the speakers would be switched on, but they hand Lee an enormous dilemma between his engagement policy and pressure to answer the North's military moves.

The fight over the border has built for two years. North Korea has fortified its side of the demilitarized zone with mines, barriers and fencing since April 2024. Seoul said this month that the North had put as many as 7,000 workers on the project this year, and Kim said on Monday that South Korean forces had made 2,870 loudspeaker warnings and fired 201 warning shots between August 1 and October 17. Both sides have used loudspeakers before: the South's broadcasts carry news and K-pop, and they have long angered Pyongyang. Kim also said the North's permanent border fortification project would continue, and argued it would lower the risk of a military clash.