N Korea warns South over propaganda broadcasts

North Korean propaganda is filled with threats of violence, but the country is also extremely sensitive to criticism of its authoritarian leadership, which Seoul resumed in its cross-border broadcasts yesterday for the first time in nearly five months. Pyongyang says the broadcasts are tantamount to an act of war. When South Korea briefly resumed propaganda broadcasts in August after an 11-year break, Seoul says the two Koreas exchanged artillery fire.

Speaking to a massive crowd at Pyongyang’s Kim Il Sung Square, a top ruling party official said the broadcasts, along with talks between Washington and Seoul on the possibility of deploying in the South advanced US warplanes capable of delivering nuclear bombs, have pushed the Korean Peninsula “toward the brink of war.” 

Pyongyang’s rivals are “jealous” of the North’s successful hydrogen bomb test, Workers’ Party Secretary Kim Ki Nam said in comments broadcast on state TV late on Friday.

South Korean troops, near about 10 sites where loudspeakers started blaring propaganda on Friday, were on the highest alert, but have yet to detect any unusual movement from the North Korean military along the border, an official from Seoul’s Defense Ministry, who refused to be named, said 

on Saturday.