Tensions are extremely high on the Korean Peninsula after the North and the South exchanged artillery fire yesterday. This came as at the top of a crescendo of destabilizing events occurring over the last three weeks, one of which saw South Korea blaring propaganda across the DMZ into North Korea border towns via huge loudspeakers. Kim Jong Un’s government now demands that the broadcasts stop by 5 p.m. tomorrow night or there will be military action.
According to NBCNews.com, the latest broadcasts made on the eleven massive loudspeaker installations along the DMZ includes boasts about the superiority of quality of life in South Korea, pop music, soap operas, and letting North Korean soldiers that defectors are embraced by the South. And basically, the North is getting pretty sick of it.
Such bellicose threats are normally taken with a grain of salt in South Korea, but after the North lobbed artillery over the DMZ into South Kora at a loudspeaker installation on Thursday, resulting in a counter-battery return of dozens of artillery rounds from the South, this deadline could be much more than an hollow threat.
North Korea is said to have also called its fighting forces into a pre-war alert state, a move that at the very least shows that the North is fortifying its defensive capabilities.
Photos via AP
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