This handout photo taken on August 4, 2025, and provided by the South Korean Defense Ministry shows South Korean soldiers removing loudspeakers that were set up for propaganda broadcasts near the demilitarized zone separating the two Koreas in an undisclosed location in South Korea. HANDOUT / AFP
South Korea said on Monday, August 4, that it was removing loudspeakers used to blare K-pop and news reports to the North, as the new administration in Seoul tries to ease tensions with its bellicose neighbor.
The nations, still technically at war, had already halted propaganda broadcasts along the demilitarized zone, Seoul's military said in June after the election of President Lee Jae Myung. It said in June that Pyongyang stopped transmitting bizarre, unsettling noises along the border that had become a major nuisance for South Korean locals, a day after the South's loudspeakers fell silent.
"Starting today, the military has begun removing the loudspeakers," Lee Kyung-ho, spokesman of the South's Defense Ministry, told reporters on Monday. "It is a practical measure aimed at helping ease tensions with the North, provided that such actions do not compromise the military's state of readiness."
