The Latest: S. Korea to remove loudspeakers at border

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — The Latest on developments in relations between North and South Korea (all times local):

South Korea's president is saying that U.S. President Donald Trump "can take the Nobel prize" as long as the Koreas receive peace in return.

Moon Jae-in made the comment Monday in response to a suggestion by the widow of late South Korean President Kim Dae-jung, who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2000 after a summit with then North Korean leader Kim Jong Il.

The widow said Moon, who met with current North Korean leader Kim Jong Un last week, should also receive the prize. In the recent summit, Moon and Kim Jong Un walked together across the tense border and agreed to a raft of initiatives meant to ease animosity.

Moon responded that "President Trump can take the Nobel prize. The only thing we need is peace."

South Korea says it will remove propaganda-broadcasting loudspeakers from the border with North Korea.

The announcement came three days after the leaders of the two Koreas agreed to work together to achieve a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula and end hostile acts against each other along their border during their rare summit talks.

Seoul's Defense Ministry said Monday it will pull back dozens of its frontline loudspeakers on Tuesday.

It says Seoul expects Pyongyang to do the same.

South Korea had turned off its loudspeakers ahead of Friday's summit talks, and North Korea responded by halting its own broadcasts.

Seoul had blasted propaganda messages and K-pop songs from border loudspeakers since the North's fourth nuclear test in early 2016. The North quickly matched the South's action with its own border broadcasts. </s> South Korea says it will remove propaganda-broadcasting loudspeakers from the border with North Korea. The announcement came three days after the leaders of the two Koreas agreed to work together to achieve a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula and end hostile acts against each other along their border during their rare summit talks.

Seoul’s Defense Ministry said on Monday it will pull back dozens of its frontline loudspeakers tomorrow. It says Seoul expects Pyongyang to do the same.

Read | North Korea to align with South’s time zone as first practical step toward reconciliation

South Korea had turned off its loudspeakers ahead of Friday’s summit talks, and North Korea responded by halting its own broadcasts. Seoul had blasted propaganda messages and K-pop songs from border loudspeakers since the North’s fourth nuclear test in early 2016. The North quickly matched the South’s action with its own border broadcasts.

Meanwhile, North Korea’s chief ally China said its foreign minister will visit Pyongyang this week following the historic summit between the leaders of the two Koreas. The trip by Wang Yi comes as Beijing and Pyongyang continue an effort to repair ties that have suffered from tensions in recent years, and ahead of a planned meeting between President Donald Trump and the North’s leader Kim Jong Un.

For all the latest World News, download Indian Express App </s> South Korea said it will remove propaganda-broadcasting loudspeakers from the tense border with North Korea.

FILE - In this Friday, Jan. 8, 2016 file photo, a South Korean army soldier stands near the loudspeakers near the border area between South Korea and North Korea in Yeoncheon, South Korea. (Lim Tae-hoon/Newsis via AP, File)

South Korea will remove propaganda-broadcasting loudspeakers from the border with North Korea this week, officials said Monday, as the rivals move to follow through with their leaders’ summit declaration that produced reconciliation steps without a breakthrough in the nuclear standoff.

During their historic meeting Friday at a Korean border village, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and South Korean President Moon Jae-in agreed to end hostile acts against each other along their tense border, establish a liaison office and resume reunions of separated families. They also agreed to achieve a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula, but failed to produce specific time frames and disarmament steps.

Seoul’s Defence Ministry said it would pull back dozens of its front-line loudspeakers on Tuesday before media cameras. Ministry spokeswoman Choi Hyunsoo Seoul expects Pyongyang to do the same.

South Korea had already turned off its loudspeakers ahead of Friday’s summit talks, and North Korea responded by halting its own broadcasts.

The two Koreas had been engaged in Cold War-era psychological warfare since the North’s fourth nuclear test in early 2016. Seoul began blaring anti-Pyongyang broadcasts and K-Pop songs via border loudspeakers, and Pyongyang quickly matched the South’s action with its own border broadcasts and launches of balloons carrying anti-South leaflets.

Seoul’s announcement came a day after it said Kim told Moon during the summit that he would shut down his country’s only known nuclear testing site and allow outside experts and journalists to watch the process.

South Korean officials also cited Kim as saying he would be willing to give up his nuclear programs if the United States commits to a formal end to the Korean War and a pledge not to attack the North. Kim had already suspended his nuclear and missile tests while offering to put his nukes up for negotiations.

The closing of the Punggy-ri test site, where all six of North Korea’s atomic bomb tests occurred, could be an eye-catching disarmament step by Pyongyang. But there is still deep skepticism over whether Kim is truly willing to negotiate away the nukes that his country has built after decades of struggle and sacrifice.

According to a summit accord, Kim and Moon agreed to achieve “a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula through complete denuclearization,” rather than clearly stating “a nuclear-free North Korea.” Pyongyang has long said the term “denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula” must include the United States pulling its 28,500 troops out of South Korea and removing its so-called “nuclear umbrella” security commitment to South Korea and Japan.

Kim could offer more disarmament concessions during his meeting with President Donald Trump, expected in May or June, but it’s unclear what specific steps he would take. Some experts say Kim may announce scraping North Korea’s long-range missile program, which has posed a direct threat to the United States.

U.S. National Security Adviser John Bolton reacted coolly to word that Kim would abandon his weapons if the United States pledged not to invade.

Asked on CBS’s “Face the Nation” whether the U.S. would make such a promise, Bolton said: “Well, we’ve heard this before. This is — the North Korean propaganda playbook is an infinitely rich resource. What we want to see from them is evidence that it’s real and not just rhetoric.”

Kim’s meeting with Moon was his second summit with a foreign leader since he took office in late 2011. In March, he travelled to Beijing and met with Chinese President Xi Jinping. While meeting with Xi, Kim suggested he prefers a step-by-step disarmament process in line with corresponding outside rewards, according to Chinese state media. U.S. officials want the North to take complete, verifiable and irreversible disarmament measures.

China said Monday that Foreign Minister Wang Yi will visit Pyongyang on Wednesday and Thursday.

China is the North’s only major economic partner, but trade has declined by about 90 per cent following Beijing’s implementation of economic sanctions imposed over the North’s nuclear and missile tests. Some analysts say Kim’s recent charm offensive was aimed at weakening the sanctions.

Related: World needs to be ‘careful’ about Korean peace deal, says Canadian minister

Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. </s> South Korea is apparently dismantling the loudspeakers at the border it uses to broadcast into North Korea.

South Korea has been blasting everything from Korean pop music to news reports into North Korea since the loudspeakers were set up in 1960s, according to the BBC.

North Korea has, in turn, blared propaganda over the border.

The loudspeakers have long been considered a kind of psychological warfare.

South Korea, which had already turned off the loudspeakers prior to last Friday’s summit, reportedly began taking apart the devices Tuesday.

North Korea is apparently doing the same on its side of the border.

North Korea, a country that maintains tight control over the information its people receive, is not a fan of the loudspeakers, according to former American intelligence officials.

“We don’t capitalize on our great weapon, which is information. And that’s something they worry about a lot and their reaction to the loudspeakers being activated along the DMZ or the dropping of leaflets by NGOs over North Korea,” former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper explained at a talk toward the end of 2016. “They go to nuts when that happens. So that is a great vulnerability I don’t think we’ve exploited.”

Seoul has apparently requested that nongovernmental organizations stop sending balloons filled with leaflets into North Korea.

After North Korea opted for diplomacy at the start of the year, the two Koreas reportedly turned down the loudspeakers.

North Korea, in particular, changed the music played, switching from propaganda and military marches to choral and folk music.

RELATED: Kim Jong Un Agrees to Location for Meeting with President Trump

The latest move follows a landmark inter-Korean summit during which North Korean leader Kim Jong Un met South Korean President Moon Jae-in for the first time.

The two agreed to pursue lasting peace on the Korean Peninsula.

A version of this article previously appeared on The Daily Caller News Foundation website.

What do you think? Scroll down to comment below. </s> Just days before peace talks are scheduled to take place between the two countries, South Korea has turned off the loudspeakers that broadcast propaganda along its border with North Korea.

According to the BBC, the broadcasts, which included everything from K-pop music to reports that criticized the North, stopped playing early Monday morning.

The broadcasts would normally be heard by North Korea’s troops and some of its citizens living in the area.

South Korea spokesman Choi Hoi-hyun told reporters that officials hoped the move would “ease the military tension between the two Koreas and develop a peaceful summit atmosphere.”

“We hope this decision will lead both Koreas to stop mutual criticism and propaganda against each other and also contribute in creating peace and a new beginning,” he said.

The broadcasts have been running on and off since the Korean War in an effort to persuade North Korean soldiers to question what their government is telling them.

South Korea didn’t say whether or not they would restart the broadcasts after talks take place with the North.

North Korea also has a system of loudspeakers along the border, which plays reports critical of South Korea and its allies. There has been no word yet as to whether or not the North will follow the South’s lead and turn off its own broadcasts.

The South’s border silence comes just days after North Korea announced it would suspend nuclear tests and close an atomic test site.

As reported by The Western Journal, upcoming talks between the rogue regime and both South Korea and the U.S. could represent a step in the right direction toward North Korea’s complete denuclearization.

South Korean President Moon Jae-in remains optimistic about the North’s alleged willingness to forgo hostilities, saying that demands from North Korea’s Kim Jong Un do not include deal-breakers that might stall a planned summit between the North Korean leader and U.S. President Donald Trump.

“They have not attached any conditions that the U.S. cannot accept, such as the withdrawal of American troops from South Korea,” Moon said.

In years past, North Korea’s demand that American troops leave the region had effectively stalled talks, but Moon maintained that this time around, things are different.

RELATED: Kim Jong Un Is Shutting Down Nuclear Test Site and Suspending Missile Test

“All they are expressing is the end of hostile policies against North Korea, followed by a guarantee of security,” he said.

Moon and Kim are set to meet Friday in the South Korean section of a border village called Panmunjom. The meeting will be the first inter-Korean summit to occur in over a decade.

Kim is set to talk with Trump in person by June. That will be the first time sitting leaders of the U.S. and North Korea officially meet.

What do you think? Scroll down to comment below. </s> South Korea halted anti-North Korea propaganda broadcasts across their tense border on Monday as officials from the two Koreas met again to work out details of their leaders’ upcoming talks, expected to focus on the North’s nuclear program.

Seoul had been blasting propaganda messages and K-pop songs from border loudspeakers since the North’s fourth nuclear test in early 2016. The North quickly matched the South’s action with its own border broadcasts and launches of balloons carrying anti-South Korea leaflets across the border.

READ MORE: Why North Korea’s move to halt weapons testing is a show of strength from Kim Jong-Un

South Korea turned off its broadcasts on Monday to ease military tensions and establish an environment for peaceful talks, Seoul’s Defense Ministry said in a statement. It said Seoul hopes the decision will lead to both sides stopping slander and propaganda activities.

Yonhap news agency, citing an unidentified government source, said that North Korea was believed to have turned off many of its propaganda broadcasts later Monday. Yonhap earlier reported that some North Korean broadcasts were sporadically heard in the South on Monday morning. South Korean defense officials said they couldn’t immediately confirm the status of the North’s broadcasts.

WATCH: North Korea TV says the country will stop nuclear tests, abolish test site

The move comes amid a recent thaw in animosities, with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un trying to reach out to Seoul and Washington after conducting his country’s sixth and most powerful nuclear test and three long-range missile test launches last year.

Kim and South Korean President Moon Jae-in are to meet at the Korean border village of Panmunjom on Friday in the countries’ third-ever summit talks. Kim is to hold separate talks with U.S. President Donald Trump in May or early June in what would be the first North Korea-U.S. summit.

On Monday, the two Koreas held a third round of working-level talks at Panmunjom and agreed to conduct a joint rehearsal Wednesday of the summit, Moon’s office said in a statement. It said the two sides agreed that Friday’s summit will include a welcoming ceremony and a banquet dinner as well as a formal meeting between Moon and Kim.

The Koreas agreed last week to allow live television broadcasts for key parts of the summit. Monday’s statement said North Korea also agreed on live broadcasts by South Korean media of unspecified events at the northern side of Panmunjom.

The Korean summit is to take place at a South Korean building on the southern side of Panmunjom. This means that Kim must cross the border into South Korea in what would be the first such act by a North Korean leader since the end of the 1950-53 Korean War.

Kim has said he is willing to place his nuclear program up for negotiation. But it is unclear what disarmament steps he will offer during the two sets of summit talks. U.S. officials have said they want to the North to complete full nuclear disarmament.

North Korea said Saturday it will close its nuclear testing facility and suspend nuclear and intercontinental ballistic missile tests. But it stopped short of suggesting it will give up its nuclear weapons or scale back its production of missiles and their related components.

Trump nonetheless tweeted Sunday that the North has “agreed to denuclearization (so great for World), site closure, & no more testing!”

Trump’s pick to be the next secretary of state, CIA Director Mike Pompeo, traveled to North Korea on Easter weekend to lay the groundwork for the summit meeting. Pompeo’s trip was a clear indication that preparations for the North-U.S. summit are under way, though many U.S. and other foreign experts have had doubts. </s> SEOUL, Korea, Republic Of - South Korean President Moon Jae-in has shaken off a suggestion that he receive the Nobel Peace Prize, saying that U.S. President Donald Trump “can take the Nobel prize” as long as the Koreas receive peace in return.

Moon made the comment Monday in response to a suggestion that he receive the award by the widow of late South Korean President Kim Dae-jung, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2000 after a summit with then North Korean leader Kim Jong Il.

Moon held a summit with current leader Kim Jong Un last week in which Moon and Kim, the son of Kim Jong Il, walked together across the tense border and agreed to a raft of initiatives meant to ease animosity. Moon responded to the suggestion of Nobel glory by saying, “President Trump can take the Nobel prize. The only thing we need is peace,” according to the South's presidential office.

South Korea also said Monday that it will remove propaganda-broadcasting loudspeakers from the border with North Korea this week as the rivals move to follow through with their leaders' summit declaration that produced reconciliation steps without a breakthrough in the nuclear standoff.

During their historic meeting Friday at a Korean border village, Kim and Moon agreed to end hostile acts against each other along their tense border, establish a liaison office and resume reunions of separated families. They also agreed to achieve a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula, but failed to produce specific time frames and disarmament steps.

Seoul's Defence Ministry said it would pull back dozens of its front-line loudspeakers on Tuesday before media cameras. Ministry spokeswoman Choi Hyunsoo said Seoul expected North Korea to do the same.

South Korea had already turned off its loudspeakers ahead of Friday's summit talks, and North Korea responded by halting its own broadcasts.

The two Koreas had been engaged in Cold War-era psychological warfare since the North's fourth nuclear test in early 2016. Seoul began blaring anti-North Korean broadcasts and K-Pop songs via border loudspeakers, and North Korea quickly matched the action with its own border broadcasts and launches of balloons carrying anti-South leaflets.

Seoul's announcement came a day after it said Kim told Moon during the summit that he would shut down his country's only known nuclear testing site and allow outside experts and journalists to watch the process.

South Korean officials also cited Kim as saying he would be willing to give up his nuclear programs if the United States commits to a formal end to the Korean War and a pledge not to attack the North. Kim had already suspended his nuclear and missile tests while offering to put his nuclear weapons up for negotiations.

The closing of the Punggy-ri test site, where all six of North Korea's atomic bomb tests occurred, could be an eye-catching disarmament step by North Korea. But there is still deep skepticism over whether Kim is truly willing to negotiate away the nuclear weapons that his country has built after decades of struggle.

According to a summit accord, Kim and Moon agreed to achieve “a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula through complete denuclearization,” rather than clearly stating “a nuclear-free North Korea.” North Korea has long said the term “denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula” must include the United States pulling its 28,500 troops out of South Korea and removing its so-called “nuclear umbrella” security commitment to South Korea and Japan.

Kim could offer more disarmament concessions during his meeting with Trump, expected in May or June, but it's unclear what specific steps he would take. Some experts say Kim may announce scraping North Korea's long-range missile program, which has posed a direct threat to the United States.

U.S. National Security Adviser John Bolton reacted coolly to word that Kim would abandon his weapons if the United States pledged not to invade.

Asked on CBS's “Face the Nation” whether the U.S. would make such a promise, Bolton said: “Well, we've heard this before. This is - the North Korean propaganda playbook is an infinitely rich resource. What we want to see from them is evidence that it's real and not just rhetoric.”

Kim's meeting with Moon was his second summit with a foreign leader since he took office in late 2011. In March, he travelled to Beijing and met with Chinese President Xi Jinping. While meeting with Xi, Kim suggested he prefers a step-by-step disarmament process in line with corresponding outside rewards, according to Chinese state media. U.S. officials want the North to take complete, verifiable and irreversible disarmament measures.

China said Monday that its foreign minister, Wang Yi, will visit Pyongyang, North Korea's capital, on Wednesday and Thursday.

China is North Korea's only major economic partner, but trade has declined by about 90 per cent following Beijing's implementation of economic sanctions imposed over the North's nuclear and missile tests. Some analysts say Kim's recent charm offensive was aimed at weakening the sanctions.

Also on Monday, the North's parliament adopted a decree to sync its time zone with South Korea's this Saturday. North Korea's official news agency said the move was made at the proposal of Kim, who found it was “a painful wrench to see two clocks indicating Pyongyang and Seoul times hanging on a wall of the summit venue.”

Moon's office said Sunday that Kim made similar remarks to Moon during the summit.

The North in 2015 had set its clocks 30 minutes behind South Korea and Japan, saying the measure was aimed at rooting out the legacy of Tokyo's 1910-45 colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula. </s> South Korea halted anti-Pyongyang propaganda broadcasts across the rivals’ tense border on Monday ahead of inter-Korean talks this week that are expected to focus on the North’s nuclear program, Seoul officials said.

Seoul had blasted anti-Pyongyang messages and K-pop songs from border loudspeakers since the North’s fourth nuclear test in early 2016. Pyongyang quickly matched Seoul’s campaign with its own border broadcasts and launches of balloons carrying anti-South leaflets across the border.

Also read | South Korea’s Moon to meet North Korea’s Kim at border for summit

South Korea, however, turned off its broadcasts to try to ease military tensions and establish an environment for peaceful talks, Seoul’s Defense Ministry said in a statement.

It said Seoul hopes its action would lead to both sides stopping mutual slander and propaganda activities. Yonhap news agency reported unspecified North Korean broadcasts were sporadically heard in the South on Monday morning. South Korean defense officials said they couldn’t immediately confirm the status of the North’s broadcasts.

The move came amid a recent thaw of animosities, with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un trying to reach out to Seoul and Washington in recent months.

Kim and South Korean President Moon Jae-in are to meet at a border village on Friday in the rivals’ third-ever summit talks. Kim is to hold separate summit talks with President Donald Trump in May or early June.

Kim has said he was willing to place his nuclear program up for negotiations. But it was unclear how serious disarmament steps he would offer during the two sets of the summit talks. U.S. officials have said they want to the North to take complete disarmament measures.

North Korea said Saturday it would close its nuclear testing facility and suspend nuclear and intercontinental ballistic missile tests. But the country stopped short of suggesting it has any intention of giving up its nuclear weapons or scale back its production of missiles and their related component parts.

For all the latest World News, download Indian Express App </s> SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea halted the propaganda broadcasts it blares across the border at North Korea on Monday ahead of their first summit in a decade, as U.S. President Donald Trump cautioned the nuclear crisis on the peninsula was a long way from being resolved.

North and South Korea are in the final stages of preparations for a summit between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and South Korean President Moon Jae-In at the border truce village of Panmunjom on Friday.

Ahead of the summit, North Korea announced it would halt nuclear and missile tests and said it was scrapping its nuclear test site to instead pursue economic growth and peace.

“North Korea’s decision to freeze its nuclear program is a significant decision for the complete denuclearization of the Korean peninsula,” South Korean President Moon Jae-in said in a regular meeting at the Blue House on Monday.

“It is a green light that raises the chances of positive outcomes at the North’s summits with South Korea and the United States. If North Korea goes the path of complete denuclearization starting from this, then a bright future for North Korea can be guaranteed.”

The South’s propaganda broadcasts were stopped at midnight, the defense ministry said, without specifying whether they would resume after the Kim-Moon summit.

“We hope this decision will lead both Koreas to stop mutual criticism and propaganda against each other and also contribute in creating peace and a new beginning,” the South Korean defense ministry said about the decision to halt the broadcasts.

It is the first time in more than two years the South Korean broadcasts, which include a mixture of news, South Korean pop music and criticism of the North Korean regime, have been stopped.

North Korea has its own propaganda loudspeakers at the border, but a defense ministry official said he could not verify whether the North had stopped its broadcasts.

The inter-Korean talks and a planned meeting between Kim and Trump in the coming weeks have raised hopes of an easing in tensions that reached a crescendo last year amid a flurry of North Korean missile tests and its largest nuclear test.

After initially welcoming Pyongyang’s statement on halting nuclear and missile tests, Trump sounded a more cautious note on Sunday.

“We are a long way from conclusion on North Korea, maybe things will work out, and maybe they won’t - only time will tell,” Trump said on Twitter.

Still, South Korean companies with exposure to North Korea rallied after Pyongyang’s weekend announcement.

Shares of Good People (033340.KQ) and Shinwon Corp (009270.KS), which used to operate factories in North Korea’s Kaesong industrial region near the Demilitarized Zone, surged 8 percent and 15 percent, respectively.

China, North Korea’s main ally, also welcomed the North Korean announcement, but editorials in state-run media on Monday were tempered with notes of caution.

The China Daily, the official English-languages newspaper of the Chinese government, said the pledges conveyed the message that Kim will sit down for talks as the leader of a legitimate nuclear power.

“Negotiations about actual nuclear disarmament will likely prove arduous given such weapons are critical to Pyongyang’s sense of security. It will require ironclad security guarantees if it is to relinquish them.”

The Global Times, a hawkish tabloid newspaper run by the ruling Communist Party’s official People’s Daily, said all parties “should cherish this hard-won state of affairs” and continue to make efforts toward peace and denuclearization.

“Washington should not regard North Korea’s halt to nuclear and missile tests as a result of its maximum pressure,” the Global Times wrote.

“It must be attributed to multiple factors, one of which is that Pyongyang has mastered certain advanced nuclear technologies and successfully launched an intercontinental ballistic missile with a range of more than 10,000 km.”

The United States, through the United Nations, has pursued a series of tightening sanctions on North Korea aimed at cutting its access to foreign currency.

Customs data on Monday showed China’s imports from North Korea fell 87 percent in the first three months of the year, while exports dropped 46 percent.

Tourism, dominated by Chinese visitors, remains a key export earner for North Korea. Chinese tourists have been involved in a major bus accident in North Korea and there are a large number of casualties, Chinese state media and the government said on Monday.
South Korea ceases loudspeaker broadcasts directed at soldiers over the North Korean border ahead of a planned meeting later this week between leaders Moon Jae-in and Kim Jong Un.