K-pop against Kim: the radio broadcasts that have incensed North Korea

South and North Korea are engaged in a high-volume propaganda war, with the recent resumption of radio broadcasts across the demilitarised zone setting off a chain of events that have led to Kim Jong-un to threaten military action.

But what exactly is in these broadcasts that have so upset fragile relations between the two Koreas?

Radio war

Radio has been a battleground between North and South Korea since a truce in the Korean war in 1953, with broadcasting and signal-jamming taking place on both sides. The stretch of no-mans-land between the countries has been described as one of the busiest for radio-waves in the world.

The South broadcasts Voice of Freedom radio, one of three stations that transmits to the DPRK, and one of the oldest. “It usually broadcasts about ethnic homogeneity, the superiority of the South Korean system, and various types of K-pop,” said an insider, speaking on condition of anonymity.

“It used to be more stridently [against] North Korea in the past, but since the 1990s it has been trying to describe the reality of democratic society as a more effective means of psychological warfare,” another source said, also anonymously.

Broadcasts from the North are said to be more directly bellicose. A South Korean military official told the Seoul-based newspaper Kyunghyang Sinmun that “the DPRK’s broadcasts against the South deal with slander of the South Korean government, as well as promoting the North Korean regime,” adding that the North’s speakers were old and rusty and sometimes difficult to understand.

A source said the North’s main reason for broadcasting was to drown out the Voice of Freedom, adding that the South would in turn increase the volume of its own loudspeakers.

Tuning in

Voice of Freedom plays on FM radio in Seoul, as well as shortwave over the border. Its broadcasts include a combination of casual conversation alongside anti-DPRK content, an afternoon’s listening revealed.

One day last week it featured defectors talking about their lives in the South, a discussion about how to deal with hot weather and a programme of Buddhist preaching. Well-known journalist Ju Seong-ha, a defector, participated in a segment called Read the Rodong Sinmun Again, analysing North Korea’s state-run newspaper.

Ju and the anchor criticised Kim Jong-un’s behaviour, mocking staged photo-ops of him getting off a plane as though he were travelling on a state visit. “No foreign country will welcome Kim Jong-un, because he is a dictator. Thus, he is playing the king alone, on the red velvet,” Ju said.

Other content focussed on human rights abuses in North Korea, a country compared to Nazi Germany in a 2014 UN report. On this occasion, the treatment of South Korean worker Yoo Seong-jin during his illegal four month detention in 2009 was condemned.

Between shows, the station broadcasts pop music. Some songs reach back to pre-K-pop days, while others revel in the vibrant, hyper-modern sound that has made helped make South Korea a soft-power superstar.

A version of this article originally appeared on NK News