North Korea used loudspeakers to blare propaganda audio messages across the border into South Korea, the South’s Defense Ministry said Monday, in what appears to be retaliation.
The propaganda messages come a week after South Korea resumed a psychological warfare campaign using a similar broadcast method, the first time it has done so in over a decade.
South Korea said its campaign was in retaliation for landmine blasts on August 4 that severely injured two of its soldiers.
North Korea denies it planted the landmines on a route patrolled by South Korean troops in the demilitarized zone that separates the two nations.
A week after the attack, the South restarted its propaganda broadcasts, infuriating North Korea, which has in the past threatened to blow up the huge speakers its neighbor set up at the demilitarized zone.
The U.S.-led United Nations Command said its investigation found that North Korea planted the landmines.
Demand for an apology
South Korea had demanded that Pyongyang apologize for the landmines and punish whoever is responsible for the attacks against its soldiers.
The demilitarized zone has divided North and South Korea since the Korean War ended in 1953 with an armistice rather than a formal peace treaty. As a result, the two countries technically remain at war.
Tensions have flared in the past around sensitive points on their de facto border, including North Korea’s shelling of an island in 2010 that killed two South Korean marines.