Tensions continue to rise on the Korean Peninsula today after South Korea launched a series of artillery strikes against targets in the North yesterday, and has today ruled out ending its government program of broadcasting propaganda through loudspeakers across the border.
South Korea hadn’t done the broadcasting for over a decade, but brought back the loudspeakers earlier this month to deliver “information about South Korea’s development” to North Korean residents, sparking angry condemnations from the North.
This came to a head yesterday when South Korea detected a “small rocket,” believed to be an anti-aircraft weapon, was fired at one of the loudspeakers. It didn’t appear to hit it, however. South Korea responded by firing dozens of artillery shells against the north.
North Korea now says it is putting its military on a “war footing” over the incident, and asked for an urgent meeting at the UN Security Council about the situation. Diplomats say there has been no discussion at the UN about holding such a meeting.
China and the US both expressed concern about the rising tensions, though the US insisted it was entirely North Korea’s fault, and demanded that they halt their “provocations” of complaining about the loudspeakers. South Korean DM Han Min-koo vowed to “sever the vicious cycle of North Korea’s provocations” once and for all.
Wait a minute. My neighbor installs and points loudspeakers at me , after we had agreed it was childish and promised to stop, and it is my fault that he now blast me with his propaganda, yup US thinking
The US and its lacky Japans greatest economic fear is a reunification or even a massive economic trade and developement program between North and South Korea.
There is no love lost between South Korea and Japan as it is and the only thing keeping them civil is US finacial military funds.
There are still festering resentments for Japans brutality of some70 years past and the issues of who owns what Islands is a sticky subject both nations gingerly sidestep.
A combining of S korean high tech industrial and agricultural knowlege with the North’s as of yet mostly untouched and under developed natural resources, combined with Massive low wage workforces that soon with the opening of ports by south for export of minerals and import of energy would sink Japanese
economy.
Neither South or North Korean people look at the DMZ as a territorial border and instead as merely a temporary impediment to travel.
"Your father sells Rosary beads to Cambodian peasants!"
no korean, in either north or south, wants another bloody war with each other them in their motherland. whoever is jingoistic has some ulterior motive other than whatever the stated goal may be.