Star Metro - North Korea denies removing border loudspeakers

South Korea's President Lee Jae Myung has vowed to reach out to the nuclear-armed North and pursue dialogue without preconditions since his election in June -- a reversal from his hawkish predecessor.

The South's military said in the same month that the two countries had halted propaganda broadcasts along the demilitarised zone, adding last week that it had detected North Korean troops dismantling loudspeakers on the frontier.

But North Korean leader Kim Jong Un's sister, Kim Yo Jong, on Thursday denied the reports, saying Pyongyang had no interest in improving relations with Seoul.

"We have never removed loudspeakers installed on the border area and are not willing to remove them," Kim said in an English-language statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency.

"Recently, the ROK has tried to mislead public opinion by saying that its 'goodwill measures' and 'appeasement policy' are meeting a response, as well as to create public opinion that the DPRK-ROK relations are being 'restored'", she said, referring to the two Koreas by the abbreviations of their formal names.

"We have clarified on several occasions that we have no will to improve relations with the ROK... and this conclusive stand and viewpoint will be fixed in our constitution in the future," Kim added.

Her statement came as South Korea and the United States prepare to hold annual joint military drills aimed at containing the North, from August 18 to 28.

"Whether the ROK withdraws its loudspeakers or not, stops broadcasting or not, postpones its military exercises or not and downscales them or not, we do not care about them and are not interested in them," Kim said.

The South Korean government, meanwhile, maintained a diplomatic stance, saying Thursday that it would continue to "pursue normalisation and stabilisation measures" with the North.

"Over the past three years, inter-Korean relations have been locked in a hardline standoff. To turn this into a period of dialogue and engagement, we must approach the situation with composure and a long-term perspective," an official from Seoul's unification ministry told reporters.

- 'Practical measure' -

Last year, North Korea sent thousands of trash-carrying balloons southwards, saying they were retaliation for anti-North propaganda balloons floated by South Korean activists.

Later, the South turned on border loudspeaker broadcasts for the first time in six years -- including K-pop tunes and international news -- and the North started transmitting strange sounds along the frontier, unsettling South Korean residents.

Loudspeaker broadcasts, a tactic that dates back to the Korean War, have previously prompted Pyongyang to threaten artillery strikes on Seoul's speaker units.

The South's defence ministry said earlier this month it had begun removing loudspeakers from its side of the border as "a practical measure aimed at helping ease tensions with the North".

Days later, Seoul said the North had started removing its own loudspeakers "in some parts along the front line".

Lim Eul-chul, a professor at the Institute for Far Eastern Studies at Kyungnam University, said Kim Yo Jong's latest statement essentially kills any chances to improve inter-Korean or US-North Korean relations.

Calling her remarks a "death certificate", Lim told AFP her stance had "hardened" since July when she said North Korea had no interest in pursuing dialogue with the South.

"North Korea now appears to be formalising not just a refusal to talk, but the impossibility of talks with both the US and the South," Lim said.

Kim's message is that "any tension-easing move will be ignored, suggesting that military de-escalation mechanisms could be neutralised at any time", added Yang Moo-jin, president of the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul.

"The timing -- four days before the start of South Korea-US joint drills -- signals that Pyongyang may shift to high-intensity military displays, such as ballistic missile launches, or tactical nuclear strike drills," he said.

North Korea -- which attacked its neighbour in 1950, triggering the Korean War -- has always been infuriated by US-South Korean military drills, decrying them as rehearsals for invasion.

The United States stations around 28,500 troops in South Korea, and the allies regularly stage joint drills they describe as defensive in nature.

The two Koreas technically remain at war because the 1950-53 Korean War ended in an armistice, not a peace treaty.

O.Lessard--SMC