South Korea stops decade-long broadcasting service into North Korea

South Korea has suspended its decades-long radio broadcasting into North Korea following a broader policy of attempting to ease tensions, a move widely regarded a symbolic victory for Pyongyang.

According to an article by Bloomberg, one of the few uncensored sources of information available to North Korea's population has therefore effectively been cut off, Caliber.Az reports.

The Office of the South Korean President announced that the broadcasting has been halted “for some time now,” emphasizing that such a move is better than risking inter-Korean relations to deteriorate further.

“In most of the world, cross-border broadcasting is a relic of a bygone era. But North Korea is not like most of the world. It is one of the few places where people don’t have access to the Internet and are banned from accessing foreign media,” explained Martin Williams, senior research fellow at the Stimson Center to the publication.

The move is particularly significant because some of these programs date back to the 1970s and “have never paused broadcasting since their start, no matter the political relationship between the two Koreas being warm or frosty,” the scholar noted.

The decision reflects South Korea’s President Lee Jae Myung’s broader effort to improve relations with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, which has taken a different course in comparison to the hard-line policies of his conservative predecessor. Lee ordered back in June to stop the practice of playing loudspeaker broadcasts near the border with its Northern neighbour that criticize the Kim regime.

By Nazrin Sadigova