Seoul: South Korea will not resume its propaganda radio and television broadcasts targeting North Korea unless Pyongyang resumes such broadcasts toward Seoul first, a senior government official has said. The comments came after the National Intelligence Service, South Korea's spy agency, suspended all of its decades-old propaganda broadcasts targeting the North Korean regime earlier this month, including channels such as Voice of the People and Echo of Hope.
According to Yonhap News Agency, those channels, which had operated for decades, transmitted propaganda messages to North Koreans, promoting the values of South Korea's free society, criticizing the North Korean regime, and serving as a rare source of outside information for the highly restricted country. The government official stated that the suspensions were a response to North Korea's halt of its own propaganda broadcasts toward Seoul early last year, adding the government won't resume such operations unless North Korea does so first.
"If the North side resumes (its broadcasts), we will respond, but we won't be the first to do so," the official said in a meeting with reporters the previous day. After declaring in late 2023 that the two Koreas are two separate "hostile" countries, the North moved to dismantle inter-Korean concepts such as unification and suspended its broadcasting channels aimed at the South.
The North also used to operate about 10 radio signals to jam broadcasts from the South, but most had been suspended as of late Tuesday, except for two or three of them, according to the official. North Korea appeared to have suspended those jamming signals in response to Seoul's halt of its anti-North broadcasts, the official noted, adding, "It demonstrates that (the North) is closely monitoring us."
Seoul assesses there's a possibility North Korea may respond to the South's offer for dialogue, although it is unlikely to happen easily or in the near future. "The government will not rush it," the official said, adding the North also appears to be waiting for a "clear message" from the United States before engaging in dialogue.
The Lee Jae Myung government is working to ease military tensions and revive dialogue with North Korea. Shortly after taking office last month, the administration suspended the military's loudspeaker broadcast campaigns targeting North Korea along the inter-Korean border and urged a halt to propaganda leaflet campaigns by civic groups.