[WHY] Why are both Koreas fixated on cross-border propaganda?

What is it about South Korean leaflets that anger the North so much, and why have both Seoul and Pyongyang put so much effort into cross-border propaganda?

Seoul's Joint Chiefs of Staff announced on June 9 that the South Korean military would hold an exercise to recommence loudspeaker operations along the inter-Korean border. In this undated photo provided by the military, South Korean Army soldiers inspect mobile loudspeakers as part of a similar drill held in the past. [JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF]

Late in the evening on May 28, mobile phones across South Korea blared warnings that the country’s military had detected unidentified airborne objects from the North crossing the inter-Korean border.

While the alert recalled the North’s first failed attempt to launch a military spy satellite last year, the objects that flew across the border this time turned out to be balloons — specifically, balloons carrying packages filled with excrement, cigarette butts, waste paper and other general rubbish.

Before the week was done, the North had flown almost a thousand trash-laden balloons into the South as part of what Pyongyang’s state-controlled media described as a “tit-for-tat” action against anti-regime leaflets flown into its territory by defector groups living in the South.

A balloon carrying trash, suspected to have been sent from North Korea, drifts in the sea near Incheon on June 9. [YONHAP]

In a statement released by state media on May 29, Kim Yo-jong, the powerful sister of regime leader Kim Jong-un, called the balloons “sincere presents” for the “goblins of liberal democracy who cry out for guarantees of freedom of expression” in apparent reference to the South Korean government’s stance that it cannot legally block activists from sending leaflets critical of the regime across the border.

Although the North suggested it might halt the trash balloon launches if the South stopped activists from sending leaflets in the future, Pyongyang’s actions led Seoul to suspend its participation in a 2018 inter-Korean accord designed to reduce military tensions and resume measures that had been banned under the agreement, including loudspeaker broadcasts across the demilitarized zone (DMZ) that divides the peninsula.

But what is it about South Korean leaflets that anger the North so much, and why have both Seoul and Pyongyang put so much effort into cross-border propaganda?

The war before the war

While the contents of the balloons launched by North Korea and the BTS songs that began playing on South Korean loudspeakers along the border last week might come across as childish forms of retaliation, these actions constitute the latest battle in an inter-Korean propaganda war that precedes the 1950-53 Korean War itself.

“North Korean propaganda really took off in earnest around the time the South Korean government was established in 1948, reflecting the North Korean regime’s confidence that it could take over the South by turning people against the government in Seoul,” says Lee Ho-ryung, a senior research fellow at the Korea Institute for Defense Analyses.

A North Korean soldier stands guard on the balcony of a watch post along the inter-Korean border across from Paju, Gyeonggi, on June 9. [YONHAP]

The North’s early emphasis on using propaganda against the South stemmed from the belief of North Korea’s founding leader Kim Il Sung that psychological warfare constituted “the most potent strategic means” for both touting the superiority of the newly communized North and neutralizing the nascent republic in the South even before launching his invasion across the 38th parallel on June 25, 1950, according to Col. Lee Yoon-gyu, a senior research director at the Korea Institute for Military Affairs and author of “Psychological Warfare During the Korean War.”

“By making nine overtures for reunification to the South, including a plan to establish a unified government with an inter-Korean parliament just five days before his planned invasion, Kim deceived the South Korean government and the people into letting down their guard against an attack,” Lee said.

Just as the North Korean troops began their invasion of the South, Kim’s regime falsely claimed over radio waves and print media that it was mounting a counterattack in response to a South Korean assault on its territory, underlining the importance that the North Korean leader assigned to laying psychological and political justification for the war, according to Lee.

Calling for surrender from the air

During the first 13 months of hostilities that began in June 1950, the war in Korea was fluid and marked by drastic changes in territory that saw Seoul change hands four times.

But after South Korean and UN forces reclaimed the capital in July 1951, fighting along the rugged front turned into a stalemate characterized by battles of attrition over relatively minor territorial gains and losses.

With fighting bogged down in trenches and valleys across the peninsula, airborne propaganda leaflets showered over the front lines by both sides focused on convincing enemy soldiers to surrender, according to Jacco Zwetsloot, the host of the NK News podcast.

“Propaganda in this period encouraged soldiers on the other side to stop fighting and allow themselves to be taken prisoner,” Zwetsloot explained. “For example, North Korean and Chinese flyers told South Korean soldiers to use communist leaflets as ‘safe passes’ that would allow them to safely surrender and receive blankets and warm meals once they crossed the frontlines.”

Zwetsloot also observed that North Korean and Chinese flyers tailored their messaging to soldiers from South Korea and the United States by emphasizing social divisions in both countries with the intent of leading them to question the value of fighting.

“Flyers by the communists targeted working-class South Korean soldiers by suggesting rich capitalists in the South were only getting richer through the war and also sleeping with their girlfriends, while leaflets aimed at black U.S. soldiers reminded them of racial discrimination at home and in their army.”

While South Korean and UNC propaganda also promised better treatment for their North Korean and Chinese audiences, their flyers also made use of testimonials from communist soldiers who had defected to the South.

“A lot of these leaflets took the form of letters by defectors that were addressed to their former comrades and detailed how much better conditions were on the southern side. These flyers often included photos of the writer dressed in a new smart uniform, or being welcomed with a hot meal by his South Korean captors,” Zwetsloot said.

But propaganda by both the communists and the UNC was not only aimed at soldiers.

“A lot of material from both sides tried to turn civilians against their military,” Zwetsloot said, noting that the UNC also tried to discourage North Korean civilian participation in the communist war effort “by warning them that they could be bombed if they helped rebuild a bridge, for instance.”

Changing times, changing messages

Although active hostilities ended with the armistice of July 1953, the end of fighting merely marked a new phase in the inter-Korean propaganda war as the two Koreas began to play up their relative strengths while denigrating the other’s shortcomings from the 1960s to 1980s.

For example, the UNC — which carried out cross-border leafletting through Operation Jilli (“Truth”) until the mid-to-late 1960s — produced flyers that emphasized South Korea’s economic development, which were then released via planes flying close to the border where the wind might carry them into the North.

A South Korean propaganda flyer from the 1980s shows construction underway on an oil tanker in a domestic shipyard to highlight the country's status as the world's second-largest shipbuilder/ [JACCO ZWETLOOT]

“Propaganda from the South Korean side tended to emphasize how much life had improved since the war and boasted about the South’s newfound industrial prowess,” Zwetsloot said, pointing to leaflets that highlighted the South’s then-burgeoning shipbuilding and coal industries, then later South Korean fashion and freewheeling consumer culture.

But South Korean leaflets also tried to stoke discontent among North Koreans against their communist regime, such as by pointing out “how many meetings Workers’ Party cadres hold while actual workers toil in the fields,” according to Zwetsloot.

A South Korean propaganda leaflet from the 1990s shows the country's youth dressed in ″various types of clothing″ on a street in Myeong-dong, central Seoul, to highlight their freedom to ″express individuality″ compared to their counterparts in the communist North. [JACCO ZWETLOOT]

By contrast, North Korean propaganda during this period tended to focus less on economic issues and more on denigrating the South for the presence of U.S. troops and its authoritarian government.

Lee Ho-ryung observed that the North’s propaganda push through the 1960s and 70s showed the regime “believed even after the war it could overthrow the government in Seoul by fomenting a communist revolution.”

But the North’s intensifying efforts to foster pro-communist agitation in the South by trying to convert key figures to communism caused Seoul to expand its own anti-Pyongyang messaging, according to Lee.

Under President Park Chung Hee, loudspeakers were installed along the southern side of the DMZ in 1963, facing off North Korean broadcasts that praised the regime’s own communist system and denounced the South as a “depraved capitalist” country.

The North also played up its political independence in its propaganda materials, which depicted the South “as a U.S. colony and its soldiers as the lackeys of Americans,” according to Lee Yoon-gyu.

To this end, North Korean propaganda took quite a bit of creative license with stories of abuses committed in the South, where a military dictatorsip held power until 1987.

“North Korean leaflets fixated especially on what U.S. soldiers were doing with, or to, South Korean women,” Zwetsloot said, adding that flyers from the 1970s and 80s also “often told exaggerated or entirely fabricated stories about deeds committed by the South Korean or U.S. military, such as a South Korean drill sergeant who somehow killed 20 conscripts during training.”

Fabrications aside, both Zwetsloot and Lee noted that North Korean propagandists also drew their material from real events in the South, such as President Chun Doo Hwan’s violent suppression of the pro-democracy uprising in Gwangju in May 1980, to try and turn South Koreans against their government.

“Chun was an especially easy figure to caricature, not only politically but also physically, because of his baldness. After the Gwangju uprising, the North Koreans had a field day printing leaflets about Chun collaborating with the U.S. government to keep South Koreans oppressed,” Zwetsloot said.

Statistics on North Korean loudspeaker broadcasts compiled by the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff between 1980 and 2000 show that Pyongyang dedicated almost twice as much airtime in the 1980s to criticizing Seoul’s politicians and government than it did to praising its own leaders and system after the Gwangju uprising, suggesting the North sought to capitalize on pro-democracy unrest in the South, according to Lee.

Touchy neighbors to this day

The late 1980s and early 1990s saw dramatic reversals of fortunes for both Koreas. The South, which had surpassed the North economically in the 1970s, also became a democracy in 1987, while the North went into freefall after aid from the Soviet Union ceased with its dissolution in 1991.

With the death of Kim Il Sung in 1994 and a large-scale famine underway, the North could no longer realistically extol the advantages of its communist system and thus began to push a different message toward South Korea.

“Instead of promoting its own ideology in its propaganda, the North made appeals to South Korean pride and hopes for inter-Korean reconciliation, such as calling for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from South Korea, criticizing the alliance between Seoul and Washington, and arguing that both Koreas should work to achieve unification without external interference,” said Lee.

A South Korean propaganda flyer boasts that ″the nation's capital has become a global city″ while warning the North Korean regime that it can ″try to fool people's ears, but not their eyes.″ [JACCO ZWETLOOT]

Such propaganda found fertile soil in the South, where students disaffected by the previous military dictatorships in Seoul were “lured by the North’s use of race-based nationalism,” according to Zwetsloot.

While most experts agree that such North Korean messaging no longer holds the same sway over South Korean youth as it did in the 1990s — mainly because conditions in the North have become apparent to most South Koreans over time — they also agree that the inter-Korean propaganda war is likely to remain part of the reality of the divided peninsula for the time being.

“As we saw with the trash-laden balloons and the threats issued by Pyongyang afterward, the North still views propaganda as one way of fostering conflict and divisions within South Korean society,” said Lee Ho-ryung, adding that Pyongyang “continues to issue criticism and threats against Seoul’s conservative government with the aim of encouraging protests and unrest.”

South Korean soldiers dismantle loudspeakers along the inter-Korean border following talks between Seoul and Pyongyang in 2004. [YONHAP]

Lee Yoon-gyu also noted that the North’s longtime emphasis on reconciliation, which was only recently renounced by current leader Kim Jong-un, “exploited South Koreans’ desire to avoid war and their hope for reunification.”

As for South Korean propaganda, all experts agreed that the North Korean regime especially despises any information inflows it can’t control, including K-pop music that was incorporated into the news and informational broadcasts from South Korean loudspeakers beginning in 2000.

Zwetsloot noted that such broadcasts are “singled out by Pyongyang as a danger to the morale of troops along the border, leading the North Korean military to bolster its troops’ psychological training against the information they hear.”

A South Korean propaganda flyer from the 1990s criticizes then-North Korean leader Kim Jong-il for celebrating his birthday with liquor ″bought with the blood and sweat of 18 million North Koreans″ and plates of food ″procured with the flesh and labor″ of the regime's people. [JACCO ZWETLOOT]

According to Lee Ho-ryung, the ban on loudspeaker broadcasts was incorporated into the 2018 inter-Korean military accord “due to the North’s demands and the regime’s view of broadcasts, as well as anti-regime leaflets, as threats to its own stability.”

While Lee Yoon-gyu argued that South Korean broadcasts and leaflets all serve to provide North Koreans with mostly inaccessible information and criticism of their regime, Zwetsloot noted that less than 40,000 North Koreans have defected to the South since 1953, with most coming from deprived areas close to China, and not from regions near the DMZ, where Seoul’s propaganda is more likely to be heard or picked up.

“Sometimes, one has to ask whether the juice is worth the squeeze,” Zwetsloot said regarding the South’s propaganda efforts, while noting that even the few defections from areas close to the DMZ “are a win from the perspective of South Korean intelligence.”

BY MICHAEL LEE [lee.junhyuk@joongang.co.kr]