South Korea warns of ‘firm’ response after North’s border threat

South Korea’s military yesterday warned of a “firm” response and resolute punishment for any further provocations by North Korea, saying it was “unacceptable” for Pyongyang to blame Seoul for escalating tensions.

North Korea has rejected claims it was behind an explosion that injured three soldiers last month inside the Demilitarised Zone (DMZ), the heavily mined buffer area that has divided the two Koreas since their 1953 armistice, and mockingly dismissed calls for an apology.

Pyongyang said Monday the situation along the two countries’ shared border was “grave” and that it was considering deploying additional “tactical strike means” to the area.

It also decried what it claimed were nearly 1,000 “provocative” loudspeaker broadcasts and numerous warning shots fired by South Korean forces between October 1 and 17.

Seoul said yesterday, without specifying the number of occurrences, that it had used both loudspeakers and warning shots as “legitimate defensive measures to prevent North Korean troops from crossing the MDL (Military Demarcation Line) and to drive back troops that have crossed it”.

The MDL is the border within the DMZ that separates the two countries.

Jin Yong-sung, chairman of South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, accused Pyongyang of “baselessly shifting the blame for escalating military tensions onto our own military”.

“It is unacceptable that North Korea yesterday characterised our legitimate operational measures as a ‘provocation,’” Jin said, according to a statement.

Jin ordered the military to “respond with firm resolve” should North Korea use Seoul’s actions as a pretext for aggressive action, while the defence ministry warned they would be met with “resolute” punishment.

A string of cross-border incidents has weighed on North-South ties in recent years.

In 2024, North Korea sent thousands of trash-carrying balloons south, calling them retaliation for anti-Pyongyang balloons launched by South Korean activists.

The South later resumed border loudspeaker broadcasts for the first time in six years, including K-pop and international news, while the North began transmitting strange, eerie sounds across the frontier, unsettling South Korean residents.

“What North Korea fears is not so much the warning shots used to drive their troops back, but Seoul’s loudspeaker broadcasts and the distribution of anti-North Korea leaflets,” Hong Sung-pyo, senior researcher at the Korea Institute for Military Affairs, told AFP.

“They are very sensitive to such measures because they could expose information that the regime has sought to conceal -- the realities of South and North Korea.”

Seoul has accused Pyongyang of “a clear violation of the Armistice Agreement” over the explosion that injured South Korean soldiers in the DMZ, while Seoul’s civilian leadership called for the North to return to dialogue.

Pyongyang has since ridiculed South Korean President Lee Jae Myung’s overture, with Kim Yo Jong, the powerful sister of the North’s leader, dubbing it “the climax of the farce.”

South Korea’s Defence Minister Kang Shin-chul said last month that its military had “a range of necessary measures at our disposal, and we will implement them in stages” to respond to the DMZ mine incident, without giving details.

North Korea has separately tested a slew of weapons recently, including a “new-type” precision-guided torpedo system and an intermediate-range hypersonic missile, both of which were said to employ AI technology.