North Korea’s Kim Yo Jong has warned that anti-South Korea loudspeakers will be on standby along the entire border within days, threatening “the most horrible and distressing situation” if Seoul continues what Pyongyang calls interference in its internal affairs.

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Kim Yo Jong, the powerful sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, issued the warning on Thursday after visiting fortification sites with senior military officials the previous evening. She said the North would activate anti-South Korea loudspeakers across the border by the end of October, with unspecified new countermeasures placed on alert.

She accused South Korean troops of conducting warning broadcasts and firing warning shots at multiple locations near the border. South Korea said the warning shots were “legitimate and defensive measures.” Kim warned that North Korean troops would “mercilessly eliminate” South Korean forces if warning fire harmed North Korean territory or personnel.

South Korea’s military and Unification Ministry urged Pyongyang to return to talks, with the military saying Kim’s statements showed that measures taken with the UN Command to strengthen control in the demilitarised zone were having an effect. The defence ministry said Seoul would take “proportionate measures” if North Korea acted on its threats, though no decision had been made.

Loudspeaker Threat Adds Pressure on Seoul

The fresh threats deal a blow to South Korean President Lee Jae Myung’s efforts to ease inter-Korean hostility, raising tensions along the heavily fortified frontier to their highest level since he took office in June last year. Both Koreas have historically used loudspeakers to broadcast propaganda across the border, with South Korean broadcasts featuring K-pop music and news that have long irked Pyongyang and prompted tit-for-tat responses.

The two Koreas are separated by a demilitarised zone established after the 1950–53 Korean War ended in an armistice. North Korea has been reinforcing its side of the DMZ with mines, barriers and fencing since 2024 as it seeks to establish what it calls a permanent border with South Korea. South Korea says North Korean mines planted during that fortification work caused a blast last month that seriously wounded two soldiers; Pyongyang denies responsibility and calls the incident a South Korean fabrication.

Seoul’s Foreign Ministry said Thursday it would send a letter to the UN Security Council stating that the blast was caused by North Korean mines and constituted a violation of the Korean War armistice. The letter will demand an apology from Pyongyang and urge dialogue to prevent escalation, a ministry spokesperson said.

Since taking office, Lee has pursued diplomatic engagement and tension reduction with North Korea despite Pyongyang’s refusal to resume dialogue and its designation of South Korea as a hostile state. His administration halted South Korean loudspeaker broadcasts and dismantled fixed border loudspeakers last year—steps Seoul described as key confidence-building measures—after which North Korea suspended its own broadcasts toward the South.

Lim Eul-chul, a professor at Seoul’s Kyungnam University, said Kim’s latest warnings did not necessarily mean the loudspeakers would be immediately activated, but they presented Lee’s administration with an “enormous dilemma” as it weighed its policy of peaceful engagement against containing aggressive North Korean military activity along the border.