Balloon ban, border fencing and broadcasting television into North Korea
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Hello listeners and welcome to the NK News podcast. This episode was recorded on Tuesday, the 3rd of December 2024, here in the NK News studio and I'm joined by my colleague Ifan Bremer. Ifan, welcome back on the show. Yeah, thanks for having me as always. So tell us what has been happening along the border between the two careers. You've done a few stories recently.

Yeah, I mean, with all the news about North Korean soldiers in Ukraine, we tend to forget that there's also a lot going on here in South Korea. One thing that's definitely been a big news event here is the continuing back and forth of both balloons and broadcasts by these loudspeakers. So the latest on that is that Gyeonggi-do, which is the province...

closest to Seoul towards the north. And home of my Korean hometown, Pajushi. Well, there you go. They've banned sending balloons because you have a lot of, not a lot, but there are a couple of groups in South Korea that send balloons with anti-North Korean regime leaflets or Bibles or any kinds of...

things that promote their cause towards the North. So Gyeonggi-do has banned that in 11 spots where they used to be regularly sending these balloons. Now they've extended that ban indefinitely. So that means that anyone who tries to send balloons from South Korea, from those areas, can face legal consequences of that. Now banning is one thing, but how do you enforce a ban? Well, that's quite interesting. So they...

- Say, Gyeonggi-do says that they've deployed 120 personnel to regularly visit these 11 launch sites. - Wow. - And that's serious government spending. - Yep, that certainly is. - So that just says something about how serious they take it, because what they're worried about, of course, and what the residents worry about is

a retaliation from North Korea because as we all know DPRK is very unhappy with these balloon launches which prompted them to send their own balloons carrying trash and since recently also

anti-south green leaflets. Yeah, I've missed those since, what, 2018? So it's nice to, nice is maybe not the wrong word, but it's interesting to see them back in play again. It's interesting. I mean, I wrote a story about it and when I walked back home from the office, I basically, yeah, just bumped into one right after the story was published. So that was definitely an interesting experience.

That isn't it? Wow. I never seem to be in the right place to find leaflets on the ground. But yeah, they do fascinate me. They've been used since 1950 between the two careers and also the UNC used them for a long time.

Have you looked at the messages of these leaflets coming from North Korea to South Korea? I haven't actually looked at them very closely, but we know that basically they're targeting South Korean leadership. There's a lot of anti-President Yoon Jong-il and his wife making fun of them, also emphasizing that, for example, depression is rampant in South Korea. Yeah.

Those kind of things. So they definitely pick on things that could be sensitive in South Korea. One theme that they're not using is anything remotely similar to unification and racial solidarity and come on brothers in the South, rise up and throw off the yoke of oppression of Yoon Song-yeol and the American imperialists and join with us. No, that doesn't seem the message at the moment.

Right, so they're trying to destabilize, but they're not trying to foment some sort of unification movement. No, it definitely seems just a tit-for-tat thing going on right now, but it's a new development. First it was just trash, paper, dirt, and now they're actually putting a bit more effort, it seems, in their operations. Yeah, that is interesting. Now, what about also along the borders? I think we've talked before about on the northern side there was more...

fencing and fortification along the coasts, east and west, just north of the demilitarized zone to possibly prevent people from defecting? - Yeah, that's ongoing. So I've been following that very closely. I've tried to visit the border very regularly. And every time I go, you can see North Korean soldiers on the other side either working on new fences

clearing pathways that's still very much an ongoing process they're using dynamite to get rid of rocks and it's a very active area right now of North Green military activity to just re-establish

really, really separate the two countries even more. Yeah. Which, you know, they've been separated enough for the last 70 years, but here's an extra level. Yes. An extra layer, right. Gosh. Now, of course, in South Korea, along the coasts,

Especially if you go to Gangwon-do, you can see those fences there as well. But there are gates where you can go through, at least during the daytime, to the beach. But I guess for civilians in North Korea, they probably won't have access to the beaches there. To the beaches? No. Actually, we also saw, we did a story earlier last year, was it last year, I think,

that North Korea used this pandemic to really enforce the fencing on the coasts as well. So it's almost impossible for North Koreans to visit their own beaches. Right. Wow. Okay. Now, how about broadcasts into North Korea from the south? So we've got different radio stations, but there are also some television stations that you've recently written about. Yes. So me and Chad, we wrote a story about...

South Korean mysterious TV broadcasts. So we took this portable TV or chatted to the border and tuned in to channels that are usually not used in South Korea. There are frequencies that are more common in Europe. And we found that there are at least three channels that

constantly broadcasting targeted content. So you have to imagine this is TV shows about defecting, TV shows about live in South Korea, also news broadcasters show human rights segments. It's very much clear that this is a broadcast that's not intended to be known in the South, but definitely hopefully picked up

in the north according to who's sending it and we don't know actually who is behind these channels that said it's a serious operation yeah to you cannot just start broadcasting TV customized channels um that definitely suggests that there is some kind of um

government involvement in this operation. It does suggest that. Do you know, is this VHF or UHF, the signal that is being sent into the north? Because, of course, in South Korea, as far as I'm aware, in recent years, I mean in the last two decades, all terrestrial broadcasting has more or less stopped and now everything is through cable or through internet these days. So it's really hard to find

You know, if you had an old television and turned it on, you wouldn't be able to pick up many channels here in South Korea. Yeah, we picked it up with a UHF and VHF compatible portable television. Right. Yeah. And we presume that these are also channels that North Korean TVs can pick up. Yeah.

Okay, all right. You wouldn't expect a lot of North Koreans to have portable TVs. They're especially bought in. But if they're on compatible networks or frequencies, then North Koreans might accidentally pick them up. Yeah, we already knew about radio broadcasts going from south to north. But these TV broadcasts, there's not much written about it. And it's quite impressive. They even set up...

Like these channels that don't actually exist in South Korea, right? Do you have the names of any of them? We had 24 주요 뉴스, which was key news, that doesn't exist. But it was, you know, full on with the logo and everything.

Yeah, it's quite interesting to see. We're also not really clear what the intent behind this is, if it's just to annoy the North Korean government or whether it actually, the people behind it hope that it will spark off more defections. We don't know. But what's clear is that on both sides, there is some psychological warfare going on on the border. Is some of the content on these TV stations originally South Korean TV content?

repurposed or rebroadcast into North Korea? Like, for example, is it Iman Gap? Is that one of the shows? Exactly, yeah. It's mainly existing TV shows that have been repurposed with just a different logo on it. We haven't found evidence that there's customized...

What about the news broadcasts then? They're just very selective, North Korea-focused news segments. But stuff that you might see broadcast on South Korean television? Yes. Presumably, I guess in your reporting, you sought comment from the South Korean government, various agencies and ministries? Yeah, we didn't get anything back.

So a firm no comment there. Yeah, well, the unification ministry, they just simply said we have nothing to do with this. But the intelligence agencies and also the Ministry of Defence, we didn't get anything back from them. Interesting, interesting. Gosh, okay. Well, any

Any last words or thoughts on the border before we move on to our next topic? No, I mean, I think it's most interesting that right now there's just so much activity there. Yes. And this is driving people living close to the border crazy. If you go there now, you see banners along the road hung up by residents that state,

South and North both stop with your broadcasts and audiobooks because the people there, they're going nuts from all this sound. The loudspeakers. The North Korea broadcasts white noise or strange...

eerie moans and things. And South Korea sends, what, news and music, I suppose, and weather forecast. I guess, I can only assume, because you probably didn't stay there for 24 hours to watch all of the broadcast over a day, but I guess that they're probably including news about the Ukraine war and North Korea's involvement in it in some of the broadcast there. Definitely. There was a lot of content on the Ukraine war. They also showed a screen with...

phone numbers linking to telegram channels from the Ukrainian government. Wow. All in Hangul, in Korean writing. Wow. For soldiers where they can defect, basically. So I'm not sure what the intent behind that is because we have to assume that these soldiers are

Yeah, they're already there. But yeah, definitely a lot of content related to that. Well, that brings me to my next theme. So why aren't we... This week, Volodymyr Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, said that North Korean soldiers have been killed and injured in some strikes in the Kursk region. Why are we not seeing more, you know, hard proof, smoking guns, as it were, of North Korean involvement there? Yeah, that's a big question that everyone has. We definitely...

- I don't have much. There are two videos that early on came out from North Korean, allegedly North Korean troops

who are still close to the North Korean border in Russia, those videos have been the main evidence. And then Ukrainian intelligence has been releasing short audio bits of radio chatter from allegedly North Korean troops that they picked up. But beyond that, what we're not seeing is casualties or protests.

Or prisoners. Yeah. Right. Or defections even. Or defections. So this is a big question. Right now I can only guess that North Korean troops are not on a big scale deployed in actual battles. Yes. They're still careful with how to actually use these troops, Russia. Yeah.

if they're using North Korean troops already, we can presume that they're embedded with-- - With Russian units. - Russian units, also Russian units with particular ethnic groups from the Far East that might look like North Koreans. This is one tactic that we've been reading about. But if you're talking about 10,000 troops, it's a big question of even why there's not more proof on Russian social media, for example.

if these troops travel through towns, right? And those kinds of things. So I do think that there must be a very elaborate instructions to be as quiet as possible still. At the same time, we're seeing that on a leadership level,

there's more and more confidence with showing this military alliance. Right. The Russian defense minister was just in Pyongyang recently. Yes, yes. So it's still very interesting to see how this plays out and what's actually happening. And I'll keep my eyes out on whether we will see more proof of these North Korean troops. And also one thing that I've noticed going through Russian social media is that

Even among these telegram groups of Russian units where North Korean troops allegedly are already embedded in, there's not much talk about it. So I presume that it's either being censored or Russian soldiers would have gotten clear instructions to not publicly talk about North Korean presence in their units.

That does seem possible. I do remember from one of those first two videos that came out showing North Koreans apparently in or near a training camp in Russia's Far East, the filmer is standing behind a wall or a fence and says, we're not supposed to be filming this in Russian. Right. So, yeah, perhaps they have been given strict orders that don't put this up on the Internet or in telegram groups or whatnot. That doesn't mean that it will stay that way, right? Right.

More and more also at the UN, there was a North Korean diplomat who said, you know, like basically repeated Putin's stance. They're fulfilling their obligations according to the... Mutual Defense Treaty. Mutual Defense Treaty. And this kind of language is becoming more and more common. Right. So I wouldn't be surprised if also, yeah, the presence of North Korean troops will slowly but surely...

become more visible. Okay, well, listeners, you will find, of course, news when that does come to hand on nknews.org first, so do subscribe and keep checking. Thank you very much, Yifang Bremer, and we'll talk to you again very soon. Yeah, thank you for having me. Score more for less with our NK News Shop discount campaign.

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Ladies and gentlemen, that brings us to the end of our podcast episode for today. Our thanks go to Brian Betts and Alana Hill for facilitating this episode and to our post-recording producer genius Gabby Magnusson who cuts out all the extraneous noises, awkward silences, bodily functions and fixes the audio levels. Thank you and listen again next time.