Seoul Resumes Anti-Pyongyang Propaganda Broadcasts

Seoul, Jan 8 (IANS) South Korea's military resumed propaganda broadcasts against North Korea as planned in retaliation for the country's nuclear test, Yonhap news agency reported on Friday.

The anti-Pyongyang propaganda was broadcast from noon across the border toward North Korea at 11 locations in frontline areas through a set of large loudspeakers, Xinhua reported.

A military official said the loudspeakers will be operated at random day and night for about two to six hours a day in each 11 locations.

The resumption came in retaliation for North Korea's first successful hydrogen bomb test on Wednesday.

The restarted broadcasting was expected to bring strong backlashes from Pyongyang, which had called it a "direct act of declaring war".

The broadcasts will reportedly include messages against North Korea regime as well as songs, weather forecast and news.

For fear of possible Pyongyang provocations like aimed strike at the loudspeakers, the South Korean military deployed troops at the 11 locations on the highest alert.

More military assets were deployed in the areas, including anti-tank missiles, anti-aircraft defence devices, K-9 self-propelled guns and unmanned reconnaissance aircraft.

The loudspeakers can send sound as far as 24 km at night and about 10 km in the daytime. Six mobile speakers, mounted on trucks, will be mobilised as occasion arises.

The anti-Pyongyang broadcasting was restarted in August 2015, for the first time in 11 years, amid a surge in tensions, but it was stopped in the same month after the August 25 inter-Korean agreement that defused the tensions.

South Korea said North Korea's nuclear test was in violation of the August 25 agreement, reached on August 25 last year after marathon inter-Korean talks between top-level military advisors to their respective leaders.