Mr Lee, a left-winger who became president in June, is trying to be more conciliatory. Silencing the loudspeakers was one of his first acts as president. The leafleting has mostly stopped, too. Within a few days of this decision the North turned off its own noisemakers, perhaps because there was no longer any need to drown out the din from the South.
Not many people will miss the cacophony in the borderlands. Yet this is only one of the ways that Mr Lee has sought to pause activities that rile the north—and some of his other reforms are producing rather more disquiet. For years South Korea’s spy agency has broadcast radio into North Korea in the hope of giving ordinary citizens access to uncensored news. This year its stations fell silent for the first time since 2010. This switch-off came not long after Donald Trump dismantled America’s state-funded news services, which had also broadcast into North Korea. As a result, the number of hours of programming entering the country from outside has fallen by roughly 80% since May, according to the Stimson Centre, an American think-tank.
The remaining broadcasters, a smattering of activist-run outfits, have transmitted in shortwave from countries including Taiwan, the Philippines and Uzbekistan. Transmitting from South Korea would make it more difficult for censors in the North to jam their signals—but the South Korean government will not allow it, laments one person involved. So now activists are scratching their heads for new ways of reaching North Koreans. One defector from the north who lives in Seoul recently launched an internet-based radio station targeting North Koreans who reside outside the Korean peninsula, such as overseas students or labourers, in the hope that listeners will relay information they pick up from it to friends and family back home.
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