South launches anti -North broadcasts

The cross-border broadcasts began at noon local time (03:00 GMT) and an official said the military had heightened the level of alert around the locations of the loudspeakers.

“There is no hope to put an end to the North Korean nuclear conundrum if the US, South Korea and Japan do not change their policies toward Pyongyang”, it said.

A male announcer could be heard from South Korea telling North Koreans that their leader Kim Jong Un and his wife wear clothes costing thousands of dollars.

On Friday, South Korea resumed high-decibel propaganda broadcasts across the border as North Korea celebrated its leader Kim Jong-Un’s 32nd birthday.

In retaliation for the test, South Korea on Friday unleashed a ear-splitting propaganda barrage over its border with the North. The last time South Korea deployed the loudspeakers, in August 2015, it triggered an exchange of artillery fire.

 South Korean President Park Geun-hye spoke to US President Barack Obama and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Thursday to build consensus on new United National Security Council sanctions against North Korea. But for China, concerns about the regime’s possible collapse likely still supercede its concerns over North Korea’s nuclear capabilities.

South Korean and us military leaders also discussed the deployment of USA “strategic assets” in the wake of the North’s test, Seoul’s Defense Ministry said. In doing so, Seoul aims to unsettle the North Korean regime by raising questions among its people about how they are forced to live.

Some defectors, who had served as front-line soldiers while in the North, have said they enjoyed South Korean broadcasts that contained pop songs and sometimes forecast rain and recommended gathering up laundry hung on outdoor clotheslines. “We know that responding in this way is rising to the bait”. “Countries run by dictatorships even try to control human instincts”.

The measures ratchet up tensions following North Korea’s announcement of successful testing of a hydrogen bomb. It might be more hard to do so now.

“The nuclear test is making North Korea more isolated and turning it into the land of death”, an announcer said. While radioactive gases nearly certainly escaped from the underground test site, the radioactive dust that scientists normally need to distinguish a hydrogen bomb explosion from less powerful atomic blasts – like North Korea’s three previous nuclear tests – may not reach the atmosphere.

Yet China still holds the key to implementing any global sanctions against the North as it is the impoverished country’s economic lifeline. South Korea’s Defense Ministry couldn’t confirm the reports and the military banned foreign media from the border ahead of the broadcasts.

At the Korean demilitarized zone, speakers are blasting propaganda and troops are massing, but in the heart of Pyongyang, talk is only of the purported success of North Korea’s first hydrogen bomb test. The institute will continue to collect and analyze more samples. But South Korea sees K-pop and propaganda as quick ways to show its displeasure – and a guaranteed way to get a rise from the North’s sensitive and proud leadership. White House spokesman Josh Earnest tells reporters that the US will be “collecting additional evidence” and working closely with other countries in the region to learn more about the North Korean test.