K-pop vs Kim: Broadcast Mocks N. Korea Dictator

South Korea broadcasts Voice of Freedom radio, Ju and the anchor criticized Kim Jong-un’s behaviour, mocking staged photo-ops of him getting off a plane as though he were travelling on a state visit. “No foreign country will welcome Kim Jong-un, because he is a dictator. Thus, he is playing the king alone, on the red velvet,” Ju said.

[snippet] South and North Korea are engaged in a high-volume propaganda war, with the recent resumption of radio broadcasts across the demilitarised zone setting off a chain of events that have led to Kim Jong-un to threaten military action.

But what exactly is in these broadcasts that have so upset fragile relations between the two Korea’s?

Kim Jong-un puts troops on ‘war footing‘ after two Korea’s exchange artillery fire. [end]

(Continued in the full article)

Radio war

Radio has been a battleground between North and South Korea since a truce in the Korean war in 1953, with broadcasting and signal-jamming taking place on both sides. The stretch of no-mans-land between the countries has been described as one of the busiest for radio-waves in the world.

The South broadcasts Voice of Freedom radio, one of three stations that transmits to the DPRK, and one of the oldest. “It usually broadcasts about ethnic homogeneity, the superiority of the South Korean system, and various types of K-pop,” said an insider, speaking on condition of anonymity.

“It used to be more stridently [against] North Korea in the past, but since the 1990’s it has been trying to describe the reality of democratic society as a more effective means of psychological warfare,” another source said, also anonymously.

Broadcasts from the North are said to be more directly bellicose. A South Korean military official told the Seoul-based newspaper Kyunghyang Sinmun that “the DPRK’s broadcasts against the South deal with slander of the South Korean government, as well as promoting the North Korean regime,” adding that the North’s speakers were old and rusty and sometimes difficult to understand.

A source said the North’s main reason for broadcasting was to drown out the Voice of Freedom, adding that the South would in turn increase the volume of its own loudspeakers.

Buddhism, weather advice and music feature among programmes that sparked latest escalation of tensions between Seoul and Pyongyang. NK News reports.

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The Guardian: K-pop against Kim: the radio broadcasts that may have incensed North Korea.