Kim Yo Jong says North Korea's 'new firepower units' are in position on border and loudspeakers will switch on this month

Kim Yo Jong, a senior Workers’ Party official and the sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, said on Wednesday 21 October that “our new firepower units have taken their firing positions” along the border with South Korea, the state news agency KCNA reported, according to Yonhap. In a statement released that afternoon, she said loudspeakers aimed at South Korea would be “brought into operation along the entire border sometime in October”, The Asia Business Daily reported.

She said Kim Jong Un had ordered the border to be made “the most permanent line” and that, “once the border is made permanent, the risk of military clashes in this region will undoubtedly be eliminated”. She said South Korean troops had made warning broadcasts and fired warning shots at at least two locations that day, and that if this went beyond a warning, North Korean border troops would “mercilessly deal” with them.

KCNA said Marshal Pak Jong Chon, an adviser to the defence ministry, had inspected fortification work and called for “overwhelming military action” in response to what he called enemy moves. “Our army knows where our borderline is better than any others,” he said.

South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, General Jin Yong-sung, ordered troops on Tuesday to “respond decisively” to any further provocations and called it “unacceptable” that North Korea described South Korea’s “legitimate operational measures” as provocation, Yonhap reported.

Background: North Korea has been fortifying its side of the border with mines, fences and anti-tank barriers since April 2024, after Kim Jong Un declared the two Koreas “two states hostile to each other”. South Korean forces fire warning shots when North Korean troops cross the Military Demarcation Line, which the two militaries mark differently in places. South Korea and the US-led United Nations Command attributed a 21 September mine blast that injured three South Korean soldiers to North Korean mines; Pyongyang denies involvement.