South Korea's top officer orders a firm response to any new North Korean provocation at the border

South Korea's top military officer ordered troops on Tuesday 20 October to respond firmly to any further provocation by North Korea, a day after Pyongyang threatened to deploy more weapons along the inter-Korean border and to restart propaganda broadcasts, Yonhap News Agency reported. Gen. Jin Yong-sung, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, gave the order during a visit to a front-line unit.

According to the JCS, Jin went to the headquarters of a corps responsible for the central front to check its military readiness. There he chaired a meeting of operational commanders attended by Gen. Lee Sang-ryeol, head of the Ground Operations Command, and the commanders of the front-line corps, Kyunghyang Shinmun and Hankyoreh reported. SBS News said the meeting reviewed the situation along the Military Demarcation Line, where North Korean troops have kept up activity, and the options for responding to it.

Jin was briefed that North Korea's work to fortify what it calls its border has continued near the demarcation line even after a landmine blast on 21 September wounded South Korean soldiers. He described the laying of mines south of the line, which seriously injured troops carrying out routine operations, as a clear act of provocation and a breach of the Armistice Agreement. Yonhap said three South Korean troops were hurt in that explosion.

The general said it was unacceptable that North Korea had, the previous day, labelled the South's legitimate operational measures as provocations and pinned the blame for rising military tension on the South Korean armed forces. He ordered units to respond decisively if the North used those measures as a pretext for further provocation, the JCS said in a release cited by Yonhap.

Jin added that the military had dealt with armistice violations such as incursions across the demarcation line consistently and firmly, according to its own principles and standards, and would keep doing so without wavering. He said the military would carry out operations to strengthen its initiative inside the Demilitarized Zone. After the meeting he inspected the readiness of the front-line corps and called for a strict command structure and firm operational discipline.

The orders answer a statement issued on 19 October by Kim Yo Jong, the sister of leader Kim Jong Un, and carried by the state Korean Central News Agency. She said the situation on the southern border was very unstable and that the North was reviewing the reinforcement of tactical strike weapons along the entire border, as well as the resumption of loudspeaker broadcasts aimed at the South, as pre-emptive measures. She claimed that South Korean units had issued 2,870 loudspeaker warnings and fired 201 warning shots between 1 August and 17 October. Seoul has not confirmed those figures.

The South Korean military has assessed that North Korean troops crossed the demarcation line about 50 times in August and September, and it has answered with warning broadcasts and warning shots, Kyunghyang Shinmun reported. Since April 2024, after declaring the two Koreas to be hostile states, the North has been building roads and fences and laying mines along the line in an effort to turn it into a fortified border. Seoul has said the 21 September blast on the western front was caused by a mine the North laid during that work.

The two Koreas do not agree on exactly where the demarcation line runs in some areas, which raises the risk that a renewed loudspeaker campaign could heighten tension in the border region. Cho Han-bum, a senior research fellow at the Korea Institute for National Unification, told Kyunghyang Shinmun that the North may have raised its own broadcasts first to head off a possible resumption of South Korean loudspeakers.