By Alex Jensen
SEOUL
South Korean President Park Geun-hye broke her silence on last week’s blasts at the border with North Korea Wednesday, promising to “sternly deal” with the authoritarian state’s provocations.
Her warning out of Seoul’s presidential office came as her defense ministry stepped up its response to the explosions, which left two South Korean soldiers needing leg amputations.
After a United Nations Command investigation accused the North of freshly laying the landmines hundreds of meters into South Korean territory, Seoul’s military chiefs vowed revenge at the start of this week.
Monday’s decision to resume propaganda broadcasts via border loudspeakers for the first time in more than a decade was more significant than many outsiders might grasp.
North Korea regularly bristles at attempts to penetrate the country with outside information – indeed there was an exchange of machine gun fire at the border last year after activists tried to float leaflet-laden air balloons northwards.
It was seen as a strong gesture back in 2004 when the South’s loudspeakers were pulled down during a period of improved bilateral ties. They remained switched off even after the deadly sinking of a South Korean naval vessel in 2010.
South Korea’s Defense Minister Han Min-koo said at a parliamentary hearing Wednesday that psychological warfare would be “expanded to all along the border.”
Seoul’s non-violent steps so far are just the beginning according to Han, who would not rule out a direct attack on a North Korean guard post positioned near last week’s explosion site.
Pyongyang’s state media, never shy to address inter-Korean issues, has so far been silent on the incident as well as the South’s response.
But the North is set to be further provoked by a series of joint South Korean-American military drills this month, including one exercise that was scheduled to go ahead Wednesday despite renewed tensions on a peninsula that has remained technically in a state of conflict since 1950.
