South begins to take down loudspeakers

South Korea said yesterday it has started removing loudspeakers used to blare K-pop and news reports into the North, as a new administration in Seoul tries to ease tensions with its bellicose neighbour.

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The nations, still technically at war, had already halted propaganda broadcasts along the demilitarised zone, Seoul’s military said in June after the election of President Lee Jae-myung.

It said in June that Pyongyang had stopped transmitting bizarre, unsettling noises along the border that had become a major nuisance for South Korean locals, a day after the South's loudspeakers fell silent.

“Starting today, the military has begun removing the loudspeakers,” Lee Kyung-ho, spokesman of the South's defence ministry, told reporters yesterday.