South Korean President, Aiming To Meet With North’s Leader, Orders Halt to Propaganda Broadcasts at Demilitarized Zone

SEOUL — South Korea is stopping the shouting into North Korea even as Pyongyang builds a new plant for a nuclear reactor.In hopes of launching talks with North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, South Korea’s new president ordered a halt to the South’s broadcasts into the North via mega-loudspeakers just below the demilitarized zone dividing the countries.The order to switch off the loudspeakers, which had been broadcasting K-Pop in addition to propaganda and news to the thousands of North Korean soldiers dug in above the North-South line, was needed “to carry out the promise of restoring inter-Korean trust and peace,” the South Korean command stated.The South’s president, Lee Jae-myung, who promised in his inauguration speech one week ago to try to reopen talks with Mr. Kim, had nothing to say about word from the International Atomic Energy Agency that satellite imagery shows the North’s third nuclear plant is under construction at its main nuclear site at Yongbyon, about 60 miles north of Pyongyang. The IAEA director, Rafael Grossi, in a report to his board in Vienna, said the agency was “monitoring the construction of a new building at Yongbyon which has dimensions and features” resembling another enrichment plant at the town of Kangson next to Pyongyang. “The undeclared enrichment facilities at both Kangson and Yongbyon are of serious concern,” Mr. Grossi said. While the original light water reactor at Yongbyon is “in stable operation,” he said, “additions to the support infrastructure” beside it “have been completed.” Mr. Grossi’s report proves yet again that Mr. Kim has no intention of giving up his nuclear program while buoyed by his new alliance with Russia. Indeed, Mr. Lee appeared to have given up that goal when he failed to call for denuclearization while vowing “to keep channels of communication open and pursue peace through dialogue and cooperation.” A website in Seoul that tracks North Korea, NK News, said high-resolution imagery showed “the main building” of the new facility was “mostly complete,” while “surrounding structures were still under construction and the complex grounds remained unpaved, indicating it is not yet fully operational.”The director of the East Asia non-proliferation program at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, Jeffrey Lewis, and a research associate, Sam Lair, wrote that Mr. Grossi’s “description matches a construction site we have been monitoring near Yongbyon.” The IAEA, they said on the website for Arms Control Wonk, was justified “in drawing attention to the facility as a possible enrichment plant.”Mr. Kim, while wielding North Korea’s nuclear program as a club over the South, has held off on ordering another nuclear test since the country’s sixth test in 2017, reportedly blowing up much of a mountain and killing as many as 200 people. North Korea produces several warheads a year, and is believed to have stockpiled as many as 100 of them.Mr. Lee, however, has remained silent on whatever the North is doing. Instead, beside halting the loudspeaker blasts into the North, he’s asked the unification ministry to stop people from launching balloons dropping leaflets into the North.The South’s Yonhap news agency quoted a spokesman for the South’s unification ministry urging “a halt to leaflet sending, as it can heighten tensions in the Korean Peninsula situation and threaten the lives and safety of residents near the border.”The ministry expressed “regret” that families of citizens who had been abducted to North Korea had defied “our call for restraint” and fired off still more balloons. Defectors from North Korea have said they would not give up their leaflet campaign.“It marked the first time the ministry has called for a halt to leaflet campaigns since the Constitutional Court ruled the law banning them unconstitutional in September 2023, citing freedom of expression,” Yonhap said. Mr. Lee has appointed two new justices to the court, likely guaranteeing no more rulings that might be contrary to his policies.The author of numerous books and articles on North Korea’s military, Bruce Bechtol, was extremely pessimistic about the prospects for dealing with North Korea. President Trump “is going to tell them they need to CVID their whole nuclear program,” Mr. Bechtol, using the acronym for complete, verifiable, irreversible denuclearization, said. “We still have leverage over North Korea,” he said at the Korea Society in New York, “but not as much” as when Mr. Trump saw Mr. Kim in 2018 and 2019. Mr. Bechtol said he doubted Mr. Kim wants to meet Mr. Trump after providing arms and troops for Russia’s war against Ukraine — the same reason it’s not likely Mr. Kim will see South Korea’s president despite the concessions and compromises.

South Korean President, Aiming To Meet With North’s Leader, Orders Halt to Propaganda Broadcasts at Demilitarized Zone

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