Anchor: North Korea has been seen taking down loudspeakers it recently reinstalled along the Demilitarized Zone(DMZ), according to the South Korean government. It is just one such move signalling that the North may be re-thinking its recent calls for retaliation against South Korea.
Park Jong-hong has the details.
Report: North Korea was seen removing loudspeakers placed in border areas along the Demilitarized Zone(DMZ) just a day after North Korean leader Kim Jong-un chaired a preliminary meeting of the Central Military Commission of the ruling Workers’ Party.
[Sound bite: actualities from Korean Central TV (June 24)]
“The central military committee of the Workers' Party of Koreas held a preliminary meeting of its fifth round of its seventh term on June 23 via video conference. The Workers' Party of Korea chairman and the party’s central military committee chairman, Comrade Kim Jong-un, presided over the meeting."
"At the preliminary meeting of the Workers' Party of Korea central military committee, recent [Korean Peninsula] situations were assessed, and it was decided to hold-off the military plans against South Korea which the General Staff of the Korean People’s Army proposed to the central committee meeting."
At the meeting, he ordered the suspension of “military action plans” against South Korea, according to the North Korean Central News Agency on Wednesday.
The North was known to have reinstalled around 30 propaganda loudspeakers along the inter-Korean border, two years after the two Koreas removed scores of loudspeakers under an April 2018 summit agreement to promote peace.
South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said they are closely monitoring North Korean military moves while maintaining a firm readiness posture.
Meanwhile, experts say the North seems to be rethinking its campaign to raise tensions on the peninsula.
Since earlier this month, the regime had threatened to take a series of retaliatory steps against South Korea over Seoul's failure to stop North Korean defectors from sending anti-Pyongyang leaflets into the North.
On Wednesday, North Korea’s state-run propaganda websites also took down 13 reports critical of South Korean groups’ anti-North Korea leaflet campaigns less than half a day after posting them.
Park Jong-hong, KBS World Radio News.