The use of loudspeakers to deliver high-decibel threats and taunts goes back to the 1950-53 Korean War, when mobile units with mounted megaphones would try to keep pace with the conflict’s rapidly and wildly shifting frontline (AFP Photo/Kim Jae-Hwan)
In a modern, high-tech world of sophisticated, subliminal messaging, screaming taunting messages over banks of loudspeakers seems like a decidedly old-school style of propaganda.
Retro or not, it has proved effective enough to prompt North Korea to threaten war if South Korea does not switch off the speakers it recently dusted off and retrieved from the military attic to harangue its rival across the border.
The use of loudspeakers to deliver high-decibel threats and taunts goes back to the 1950-53 Korean War, when mobile units with mounted megaphones would try to keep pace with the conflict’s rapidly and wildly shifting frontline.
In his book, “Cease Resistance: It’s Good for You,” Stanley Sandler, a historian for the US Army Special Operations Command, noted that the messages blasting out from North Korean propaganda units were about as sophisticated as their equipment.
“You have expended all your left-over equipment from World War II. It will start costing you to continue,” was one less-than-morale-shattering effort aimed at US troops.
After the war cemented the division of the Korean peninsula, North and South continued the loudspeaker battle, mixing it up with radio broadcasts and aerial leafleting.
– Changing themes –
The themes favoured by both sides were initially quite similar — the iniquities of their respective socialist and capitalist systems, the mendacity of their respective leaders and the comforts to be found on their respective sides of the border.
In the 1980s and 90s when the South Korean economy really took off, the message from the South changed as it increasingly trumpeted its success and affluence, while the North struggled with hunger and deprivation.
With the …Read More
Source:: PM Newspaper
