Sawt Falasteen - South Korea begins removing loudspeakers on border with North

The nations, still technically at war, had already halted propaganda broadcasts along the demilitarised zone, Seoul's military said in June after the election of President Lee Jae Myung.

It said in June that Pyongyang had stopped transmitting bizarre, unsettling noises along the border that had become a major nuisance for South Korean locals, a day after the South's loudspeakers fell silent.

"Starting today, the military has begun removing the loudspeakers," Lee Kyung-ho, spokesman of the South's defence ministry, told reporters on Monday.

"It is a practical measure aimed at helping ease tensions with the North, provided that such actions do not compromise the military's state of readiness."

All loudspeakers set up along the border will be dismantled by the end of the week, he added, but did disclose the exact number that would be removed.

President Lee, recently elected after his predecessor was impeached over an abortive martial law declaration, had ordered the military to stop the broadcasts in a bid to "restore trust".

Relations between the two Koreas had been at one of their lowest points in years, with Seoul taking a hard line towards Pyongyang, which has drawn ever closer to Moscow in the wake of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

The previous government started the broadcasts last year in response to a barrage of trash-filled balloons flown southward by Pyongyang.

But Lee vowed to improve relations with the North and reduce tensions on the peninsula.

Despite his diplomatic overtures, the North has rejected pursuing dialogue with its neighbour.

"If the ROK... expected that it could reverse all the results it had made with a few sentimental words, nothing is more serious miscalculation than it," Kim Yo Jong, sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, said last week using the South's official name.

Lee has said he would seek talks with the North without preconditions, following a deep freeze under his predecessor.

The two countries technically remain at war because the 1950-53 Korean War ended in an armistice, not a peace treaty.

B.Mahmoud--SF-PST