Korean border goes quiet, Trump overture — Is new breeze blowing?

Korea Herald

a day ago

Silence fell on the inter-Korean border for the first time in about a year, as North Korea abruptly halted its propaganda and noise broadcasts on Thursday — a day after Seoul preemptively paused its own loudspeaker broadcasts along the frontier.
While it remains uncertain whether Pyongyang's pause will endure or signals a turning point, the mutual silence has raised cautious hopes at a time when inter-Korean relations are at their lowest ebb.
South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff confirmed Thursday that 'there has been no noise since the last anti-South Korea broadcast was heard late last night on the western front."
The South Korean military, however, said it 'is closely monitoring North Korea's movements' to see whether the halt to anti-South Korean propaganda broadcasts will continue.
The liberal Lee Jae-myung administration took the proactive step of fully pausing loudspeaker broadcasts along the inter-Korean border as of 2 p.m. Wednesday. The presidential office explained that the move aimed at 'restoring confidence in inter-Korean relations and establishing peace on the Korean Peninsula.'
The previous conservative Yoon Suk Yeol administration resumed propaganda broadcasts along the inter-Korean border in June 2024, for the first time in around six years, in response to North Korea's consecutive launches of trash-filled balloons.
North Korea had responded to anti-South Korea broadcasts since July last year, transmitting sounds such as screeching metal, ghostly wails and animal noises, which had tormented residents in border areas for nearly a year.
'As North Korea responded to our government's pause of loudspeaker broadcasts toward the North, the suffering of residents in border areas has been alleviated,' a senior Unification Ministry official said on condition of anonymity on Thursday during a closed-door briefing.
'It is assessed that this has served as a meaningful opportunity to ease military tensions between the two Koreas and restore mutual confidence," the official added.
The measure followed the Unification Ministry's public call on Monday for civic groups to stop sending anti-North Korea leaflets across the inter-Korean border, marking a shift from the previous policy under the Yoon administration.
However, the Unification Ministry official confirmed that 'there are no official communication channels between South and North Korea.'
North Korea has refused to answer regularly scheduled military-to-military calls from South Korea since April 7, 2023. The two Koreas are supposed to hold calls twice a day —in the morning and afternoon — via liaison and military hotlines. Pyongyang did not respond to Seoul's call through the liaison hotline Thursday morning, the official added.
Inter-Korean relations have entered a prolonged downward spiral, including North Korea's designation of South Korea as an "enemy" state in its constitution.
However, the inauguration of President Lee Jae-myung — who has vowed to restore inter-Korean communications and reduce tensions — along with the return of Trump, has raised hopes of a new diplomatic thaw on the Korean Peninsula.
Karoline Leavitt, the White House spokesperson, said Wednesday that Trump "remains receptive to correspondence with Kim Jong-un, and he'd like to see the progress that was made at that summit in Singapore, which I know you covered in 2018 during his first term."
The White House's response came after NK News, a Seoul-based media outlet specializing in North Korea issues, reported Wednesday that North Korean diplomats in New York had refused to accept a letter from Trump to Kim on multiple occasions, citing an unnamed informed source.
Trump and Kim held three in-person summits between 2018 and 2019 and exchanged at least 27 personal letters, according to publicly disclosed records, as key means to build rapport between the two leaders.
Lim Eul-chul, a professor at Kyungnam University's Institute for Far Eastern Studies, said North Korea's refusal to receive Trump's letter — if the media report is true — can be seen as Kim telling Trump to first take action.
'It is a message of pressure that preemptive measures — such as a substantive change to the US' hostile policy toward North Korea — must be taken in order to restore leader-to-leader relations and exchanges of personal letters, as in the past,' Lim said.
Lim also noted that growing alignment between North Korea and Russia, and internal circumstances in North Korea — such as Kim's goal to inspire anti-South and anti-American sentiment for the regime's stability — could be reasons for its apparently cold response to Trump's letter.
'However, it is difficult to conclude that North Korea's position is fixed and unchanging in the mid-to-long term,' Lim added, pointing to various factors, including developments in the war in Ukraine and consequent changes in US–Russia relations.