Kim Yo Jong Says North Korea Will Have Anti-Seoul Loudspeakers Ready Within Days, Warning of ‘Most Horrible and Distressing Situation’

North Korea will place anti-South Korea loudspeakers on standby along its entire border with the South within days and has put new, unspecified military countermeasures on alert, Kim Yo Jong, the powerful sister of leader Kim Jong Un, said on Thursday, warning Seoul that it will face “the most horrible and distressing situation” if it continues what Pyongyang calls interference in its internal affairs.

The threats, carried by the North’s state-run Korean Central News Agency and reported by Reuters, mark Kim’s second statement on the issue within hours and amount to the sharpest escalation of inter-Korean tensions since President Lee Jae Myung took office pledging to mend ties with Pyongyang.

“Our new counter means will get into the alert for duty at all the southern border line and the loudspeakers against the ROK will be on standby in a matter of days,” Kim said, according to Reuters, using the initials of South Korea’s formal name, the Republic of Korea.

The announcement threatens to undo one of Lee’s most-touted achievements: the suspension of South Korea’s own loudspeaker broadcasts toward the North and the dismantling of its fixed speaker installations after his administration took office last year. Pyongyang later halted its own broadcasts, and border residents on both sides welcomed an unfamiliar silence. That quiet, Reuters noted, may now be ending.

Kim said on Wednesday evening, after touring front-line areas where North Korean troops are reinforcing the border, that the loudspeakers would be “in operation along the whole border” by the end of October. “Our tactical hunting teams are taking new positions, and within October, the loudspeakers for psychological warfare against the ROK will be in operation along the whole border,” she said, according to the Associated Press, which reported her statements on Thursday.

She was accompanied on the border visit by Marshal Pak Jong Chon, one of her brother’s top military officials. Kim described the fortification work as a “sacred and great undertaking” supporting the leader’s policy of permanently severing ties with South Korea, which Kim Jong Un has declared his most hostile adversary amid a broader diplomatic stalemate with Washington, the AP reported.

Seoul urges dialogue; military chief calls threats ‘intolerable’

South Korea’s government responded on Thursday by urging Pyongyang to talk. The Ministry of National Defence called on the North to discuss measures to ease tension at the border and prevent any accidental military clash, according to reports of Thursday’s developments.

The military struck a sterner note. The chairman of South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, Jin Yong-Sung, described Kim’s threats as “intolerable” and instructed the military to respond firmly to any potential North Korean provocation, the Bangladeshi outlet TBS News reported.

Kim said her Thursday statement was a response to a special adviser to Lee on defence policy, who had accused North Korea of planting the mines that wounded South Korean soldiers and told Pyongyang not to escalate tensions with loudspeaker broadcasts, Reuters reported.

She warned that if South Korean warning shots — which Seoul says are fired as “legitimate and defensive measures” to force North Korean soldiers doing fortification work back across the border — cause “actual harm to our territorial security and our service persons’ safety,” North Korean border guards “will show no mercy for the armed gangsters bereft of reason,” according to the AP’s account of her statement.

Marshal Pak, for his part, denied that North Korean troops had crossed the border during the fortification work. “Our army knows where our borderline is better than any others,” he said, according to KCNA as reported by TBS News. He accused Seoul of making “deliberate, premeditated and absurd” claims to shift blame for rising tensions and threatened an “overwhelming response” to any South Korean provocation.

The mine blast that lit the fuse

The immediate trigger for the confrontation is a land mine explosion last month inside the Demilitarised Zone that wounded South Korean front-line soldiers. Seoul blames mines laid by the North as part of its border fortification campaign; Pyongyang denies responsibility, with Kim Yo Jong calling the incident a South Korean fabrication, the AP reported.

The episode has become a political test for Lee. The president characterised the blast as an “unfortunate accident” without explicitly holding Pyongyang responsible — language that drew sharp criticism from the opposition People Power Party, whose floor leader Jeong Jeom-sik called the incident “not an accident but a clear provocation by North Korea,” according to NK Insider, a specialist publication on the North.

Lee’s governing Democratic Party used stronger language than the president, with the party calling the mine emplacement a “clear violation of the Armistice Agreement” after the Joint Chiefs released its final findings, NK Insider reported. The party rejected the opposition’s claim that the incident proved Lee’s North Korea policy had failed, noting that the border fortification campaign began in 2024, before the current administration took office.

Fortification, warnings and a cut hotline

North Korea has been sealing its side of the border since April 2024, adding mines, barbed-wire fences, anti-tank barriers and other fortifications to what is already one of the world’s most heavily armed frontiers, according to the AP. South Korea’s military said earlier this month that the North had deployed as many as 7,000 workers this year to install mines and fences, with about 50 incidents of North Korean personnel crossing the military demarcation line, Reuters reported.

Kim Yo Jong had already signalled the direction of travel earlier this week. In a statement on Monday, she said the North was considering deploying additional tactical weapons near the Demilitarised Zone and restarting loudspeaker broadcasts, describing the situation at the southern border as “very unstable,” Reuters reported. She claimed that South Korean forces had issued 2,870 rounds of loudspeaker warnings and fired 201 warning shots at North Korean personnel between 1 August and 17 October — figures Seoul has not publicly confirmed.

One structural danger, analysts note, is the absence of communication channels. Pyongyang cut off the military hotline with the South after declaring it would no longer seek dialogue or unification with what it calls its “foe,” and Kim Jong Un has declared the South a permanent enemy, according to reports of the week’s developments.

Analysis: Why It Matters

1. A direct strike at Lee’s signature achievement

For President Lee, the loudspeaker suspension was more than a confidence-building gesture — it was the centrepiece of his inter-Korean policy. He halted the broadcasts within days of taking office, dismantled the fixed speakers, and presented 2026 as a turning point toward what he calls “peaceful coexistence on the Korean Peninsula,” even carrying that vision to his keynote address at the UN General Assembly on 22 September. Kim Yo Jong’s announcement is calibrated to strike exactly there: by threatening to reverse the quiet, she forces Lee to choose between his peaceful-engagement identity and the military credibility he needs at home. That is not an accident of timing; it is the point.

2. The fortification is the deeper story

The loudspeakers are the headline, but the mines, fences and anti-tank barriers are the policy. Since April 2024, North Korea has been physically remaking the border into a sealed frontier — consistent with Kim Jong Un’s declaration that the South is no longer a wayward sibling to be reunited with but a “most hostile adversary” to be fenced out. Loudspeakers are psychological warfare; concrete and land mines are statecraft. Even if the speakers never switch on, the fortification campaign has already redrawn the facts on the ground, and nothing in this week’s statements suggests it will slow.

3. Seoul faces what one expert called an ‘enormous dilemma’

Lim Eul-chul, a professor at Seoul’s Kyungnam University, told Reuters that Kim’s warnings did not necessarily mean the loudspeakers would be activated — but they present Lee’s administration with an “enormous dilemma,” caught between its policy of peaceful engagement and the need to contain aggressive North Korean military activity along the border. The tension is visible inside South Korea itself: the president calls a mine blast an “unfortunate accident” while his own party calls it a provocation and his generals call the threats “intolerable.” Pyongyang is adept at exploiting exactly such divisions, and this week’s statements read as a deliberate attempt to widen them.

4. Kim Yo Jong’s words are the message, not just the medium

Note who is speaking. Kim Yo Jong is not a foreign ministry spokesperson; she is widely viewed as the second most powerful official in Pyongyang and her brother’s top voice on Washington and Seoul. When she says tactical hunting teams are taking new positions, or warns of “the most horrible and distressing situation,” the language carries regime weight that a ministry statement would not. Her rhetorical escalation over four days — from “considering” broadcasts on Monday, to “in operation along the whole border” on Wednesday, to “new counter means” on alert on Thursday — follows a familiar pattern: each statement raises the stakes while leaving just enough ambiguity for deniability. The content may be theatre; the authorship is not.

5. With no hotline, accidents become incidents

Perhaps the most dangerous element is the least dramatic: there is no functioning military communication line between the two Koreas. Warning shots are already being fired on a near-daily basis near fortification sites; North Korean soldiers are laying mines a few metres from South Korean troops; and one side’s “legitimate and defensive measures” are the other side’s “provocative warning fire.” In such conditions, a single misread shot can do what no statement intended. The professor’s advice, quoted in South Korean media this week, was that Seoul must urgently push to reactivate the military communication lines. Until that happens, the peninsula’s most heavily armed border is being managed by press release — and press releases do not de-escalate.

What to Watch Next

1. Whether the speakers actually switch on: Kim has promised loudspeakers “in operation along the whole border” within October and on “standby” within days. Watch for South Korean military reports of new speaker installations or test broadcasts — the gap between announcement and activation is where Pyongyang traditionally keeps its leverage.
2. Seoul’s response: Will Lee restart South Korea’s own broadcasts or reinstall the dismantled speakers? Doing so would abandon his signature détente policy; not doing so risks looking weak at home. The Joint Chiefs’ “intolerable” language suggests the military wants a firmer line.
3. The mine-blast diplomacy: South Korea is pursuing accountability for the mine explosion through the UN Command’s handling of the armistice violation. How hard Seoul presses — and how Pyongyang answers — will shape whether this stays a war of words.
4. Washington’s role: Lee has positioned South Korea as a “facilitator” for resuming US-North Korea dialogue. A loudspeaker crisis on the border complicates that pitch and tests how much bandwidth Washington has for the peninsula amid its other crises.
5. The fortification campaign: The deeper trend — mines, fences, anti-tank barriers, thousands of workers — continues regardless of the loudspeaker headlines. Any sign of the work slowing would matter more than any statement.

Sources

• Reuters: “North Korea’s Kim Yo Jong warns South Korea, says border loudspeakers to be ready within days”
• AP via WHRO: “North Korea says it will resume propaganda broadcasts across border into South Korea”
• Reuters: “North Korea’s Kim Yo Jong says loudspeaker broadcasts toward Seoul being considered”
• NK Insider: “A DMZ mine tests Lee Jae-myung’s North Korea policy”