Kim Yo Jong says North Korea is weighing more strike weapons and loudspeakers along the border with the South

North Korea is considering deploying more tactical strike weapons along its border with South Korea and restarting loudspeaker broadcasts aimed at the South, Kim Yo Jong, the sister of leader Kim Jong Un, said in a statement carried by the state-run Korean Central News Agency on Oct. 19, Reuters reported. Kim, who heads the General Affairs Department of the ruling Workers' Party, described the situation along what Pyongyang calls its southern border as very unstable.

According to the Reuters account of the statement, Kim said the North's military leadership was examining the extra deployment as a pre-emptive and suppressive step to deal with any contingency, along with other measures it considers necessary. NK News reported that she presented the moves as an answer to what she called escalating military provocations by South Korean forces, and accused those forces of firing at North Korean troops.

The statement rests on claims that Seoul has not confirmed. Kim alleged that South Korean units issued 2,870 loudspeaker warnings and fired 201 warning shots between Aug. 1 and Oct. 17, using automatic rifles and large-calibre machine guns, after accusing North Korean personnel building barriers near the line of crossing it. Reuters noted that Seoul has not disclosed figures on its activity near the border, and South Korea's defence ministry was not immediately available to comment.

Kim also named specific South Korean units, Seoul Economic Daily reported. She said the warnings were most frequent at guard posts of the 7th and 15th Infantry Divisions under the army's 2nd Corps and the 21st and 22nd Infantry Divisions under the 3rd Corps. She singled out Guard Post 278 inside the Demilitarized Zone, in the 21st Division's sector, as the site of the warning shots, and claimed that 998 warnings and 91 warning shots took place there between Oct. 1 and Oct. 17 alone.

Seoul Economic Daily said the statement stood out because it went beyond the North's usual criticism of the South and pointed to the possibility of concrete military action. Since 2024, Pyongyang has described the two Koreas as two hostile states and treats the Military Demarcation Line, the armistice line that divides the peninsula, as a national border.

Tension along the line has been rising since North Korea began fortifying its side of the border in April 2024. South Korea's military said on Oct. 5 that the North had sent as many as 7,000 workers this year to lay mines and build fences, with about 50 incidents of the line being crossed. A blast from North Korean mines last month seriously wounded two soldiers, according to Seoul, which has called on Pyongyang to halt the fortification work.

Lim Eul-chul, a professor at Kyungnam University's Institute for Far Eastern Studies in Seoul, told Reuters that the South Korean military has been on high alert over the fortification work and has answered it with warning shots and loudspeaker broadcasts. In his view, Pyongyang appears worried that those warnings could raise tension near the border or lead to a military clash.

Kim also turned on the government of President Lee Jae-myung, which took office promising reconciliation with the North. She claimed that his administration, despite its conciliatory posture, is pursuing confrontation with Pyongyang that goes further than that of his conservative predecessor Yoon Suk-yeol, Seoul Economic Daily reported. The statement did not specify which strike weapons could be moved toward the border or when a decision would be taken.