Image copyright Getty Images Image caption South Korea's speakers were blasting pop music and propaganda over the border 
 
 South Korea has stopped broadcasting propaganda via loudspeakers along the border with North Korea, ahead of top-level talks later this week. 
 
 The South has dozens of loudspeakers along the border area, which blast everything from K-pop music to news reports critical of the North. 
 
 The broadcasts can be heard by the North's troops stationed along the border and civilians in the area. 
 
 Seoul said turning them off would help set the tone for Friday's talks. 
 
 North Korea has its own system of speakers along the border, playing reports critical of Seoul and its allies. 
 
 It is not yet known whether it will follow suit and silence them too. 
 
 South Korea said the speakers, which play propaganda over the border at high volume, were turned off in the early hours of Monday morning. 
 
 Image copyright Getty Images/Pool Image caption The broadcasts are designed to sow doubt among North Korean soldiers about the official message on the South 
 
 The move aimed to "ease the military tension between the two Koreas and develop a peaceful summit atmosphere," spokesman Choi Hoi-hyun told reporters. 
 
 "We hope this decision will lead both Koreas to stop mutual criticism and propaganda against each other and also contribute in creating peace and a new beginning." 
 
 North Korea announced at the weekend that it was suspending nuclear tests and closing an atomic test site. The surprise announcement came as the country prepares for historic talks with South Korea and the US. 
 
 South Korea's President Moon Jae-in has called it "a significant decision towards total denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula". 
 
 Pyongyang's leader Kim Jong-un is due to meet Mr Moon next Friday at the truce village of Panmunjom, marking the first inter-Korean summit in over a decade. 
 
 Mr Kim is also due to meet US President Donald Trump by June. It will be the first ever meeting between two sitting leaders of North Korea and the US. 
 
 South Korea's propaganda broadcasts have been running on and off since the Korean War. The idea is to persuade North Korean soldiers to doubt what they are told by their leaders. 
 
 Their use has been increased and decreased over the years, following the diplomatic mood on the peninsula. 
 
 In 2004, the broadcasts were stopped as part of a deal negotiated between both countries. 
 
 But in 2015, after two South Korean soldiers were severely injured by North Korean-planted mines in the demilitarised zone (DMZ), the South turned its speakers back on. The broadcasts were later halted again in 2015 but re-started in 2016 in response to the North testing a hydrogen bomb. 
 
 South Korea did not say whether it planned to restart the broadcasts after the summits. 
 
 Image copyright Reuters Image caption Local residents say the Thaad system could itself become a target 
 
 Also on Monday, South Korean police clashed with protesters near the site of a military base hosting a controversial US anti-missile system. 
 
 The Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense system (Thaad) is designed to protect against missile attacks from North Korea. 
 
 However, South Koreans in the central county of Seongju, where the system is located, believe it is a potential target for attacks and endangers the lives of those living nearby. 
 
 About 200 residents blocked a road to the site, trying to prevent construction trucks from reaching the base, until they were removed by police on Monday. 
 
 China also strongly opposes the anti-missile system, believing it interferes with the security of its own military operations. ||||| SEOUL, South Korea — South Korea turned off loudspeakers blaring bouncy music and other propaganda into North Korea on Monday, silencing weapons of psychological warfare so annoying to the North that its military once fired shots across the border. 
 
 The South’s Defense Ministry said it switched off all batteries of the propaganda loudspeakers along the inter-Korean border, known as the Demilitarized Zone, days before its president, Moon Jae-in, is to join the North’s leader, Kim Jong-un, there on Friday for a summit meeting. 
 
 It said the decision was made to help “ease military tensions and create a peaceful mood for the meeting.” The venue — Panmunjom, a “truce village” inside the DMZ — is within the earshot of propaganda broadcasts from both sides. 
 
 “We hope that our move today will result in South and North Korea ending mutual slandering and propaganda against each other and creating a peaceful new beginning,” the ministry said in a statement. ||||| FILE - In this Friday, Jan. 8, 2016 file photo, a South Korean army soldier stands near the loudspeakers near the border area between South Korea and North Korea in Yeoncheon, South Korea. South Korea... (Associated Press) 
 
 FILE - In this Friday, Jan. 8, 2016 file photo, a South Korean army soldier stands near the loudspeakers near the border area between South Korea and North Korea in Yeoncheon, South Korea. South Korea on Monday, April 30, 2018, said it will remove propaganda-broadcasting loudspeakers from the tense... (Associated Press) 
 
 SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — South Korea will remove propaganda-broadcasting loudspeakers from the border with North Korea this week, officials said Monday, as the rivals move to follow through with their leaders' summit declaration that produced reconciliation steps without a breakthrough in the nuclear standoff. 
 
 During their historic meeting Friday at a Korean border village, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and South Korean President Moon Jae-in agreed to end hostile acts against each other along their tense border, establish a liaison office and resume reunions of separated families. They also agreed to achieve a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula, but failed to produce specific time frames and disarmament steps. 
 
 Seoul's Defense Ministry said it would pull back dozens of its front-line loudspeakers on Tuesday before media cameras. Ministry spokeswoman Choi Hyunsoo Seoul expects Pyongyang to do the same. 
 
 South Korea had already turned off its loudspeakers ahead of Friday's summit talks, and North Korea responded by halting its own broadcasts. 
 
 The two Koreas had been engaged in Cold War-era psychological warfare since the North's fourth nuclear test in early 2016. Seoul began blaring anti-Pyongyang broadcasts and K-Pop songs via border loudspeakers, and Pyongyang quickly matched the South's action with its own border broadcasts and launches of balloons carrying anti-South leaflets. 
 
 Seoul's announcement came a day after it said Kim told Moon during the summit that he would shut down his country's only known nuclear testing site and allow outside experts and journalists to watch the process. 
 
 South Korean officials also cited Kim as saying he would be willing to give up his nuclear programs if the United States commits to a formal end to the Korean War and a pledge not to attack the North. Kim had already suspended his nuclear and missile tests while offering to put his nukes up for negotiations. 
 
 The closing of the Punggy-ri test site, where all six of North Korea's atomic bomb tests occurred, could be an eye-catching disarmament step by Pyongyang. But there is still deep skepticism over whether Kim is truly willing to negotiate away the nukes that his country has built after decades of struggle and sacrifice. 
 
 According to a summit accord, Kim and Moon agreed to achieve "a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula through complete denuclearization," rather than clearly stating "a nuclear-free North Korea." Pyongyang has long said the term "denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula" must include the United States pulling its 28,500 troops out of South Korea and removing its so-called "nuclear umbrella" security commitment to South Korea and Japan. 
 
 Kim could offer more disarmament concessions during his meeting with President Donald Trump, expected in May or June, but it's unclear what specific steps he would take. Some experts say Kim may announce scraping North Korea's long-range missile program, which has posed a direct threat to the United States. 
 
 U.S. National Security Adviser John Bolton reacted coolly to word that Kim would abandon his weapons if the United States pledged not to invade. 
 
 Asked on CBS's "Face the Nation" whether the U.S. would make such a promise, Bolton said: "Well, we've heard this before. This is — the North Korean propaganda playbook is an infinitely rich resource. What we want to see from them is evidence that it's real and not just rhetoric." 
 
 Kim's meeting with Moon was his second summit with a foreign leader since he took office in late 2011. In March, he traveled to Beijing and met with Chinese President Xi Jinping. While meeting with Xi, Kim suggested he prefers a step-by-step disarmament process in line with corresponding outside rewards, according to Chinese state media. U.S. officials want the North to take complete, verifiable and irreversible disarmament measures. 
 
 China said Monday that Foreign Minister Wang Yi will visit Pyongyang on Wednesday and Thursday. 
 
 China is the North's only major economic partner, but trade has declined by about 90 percent following Beijing's implementation of economic sanctions imposed over the North's nuclear and missile tests. Some analysts say Kim's recent charm offensive was aimed at weakening the sanctions. ||||| Seoul, South Korea (CNN) South Korea says it will resume broadcasting propaganda messages over its heavily armed border with North Korea in retaliation for landmine blasts that wounded two of its soldiers. 
 
 The use of loudspeakers to blare government messages into North Korean territory is a form of psychological warfare that the South Korean Defense Ministry stopped more than a decade ago during a thaw in relations between the two sides. 
 
 Restarting the broadcasts is all but certain to infuriate North Korea, which has threatened in the past to destroy the groups of huge speakers that the South set up at the demilitarized zone that separates the two countries. 
 
 But the South Korean government is upset over the serious leg injuries suffered by two soldiers who stepped on landmines last week in the demilitarized zone, which is considered to be the most heavily fortified border in the world. 
 
 South Korea and the U.S.-led United Nations Command in Korea said Monday that the North Korean military planted the mines in the southern half of the zone along a route patrolled by South Korean troops. 
 
 Wounded soldiers forced to have amputations 
 
 One of the soldiers had to have part of each leg amputated, and the other had to have one foot removed at the ankle, the South Korean Defense Ministry said. 
 
 Before South Korea announced the resumption of propaganda broadcasts, Maj. Gen. Koo Hong-mo, director of operations of the South's Joint Chiefs of Staff, warned that North Korea would "pay a harsh price" for laying the mines. He demanded that Pyongyang apologize for planting the landmines and severely punish whoever is responsible. 
 
 There was no immediate comment on the matter Monday in North Korean state media. 
 
 The South Korean Defense Ministry declined to specify when exactly the propaganda broadcasts would resume. It said sound from the the giant loudspeakers can travel about 24 kilometers (15 miles) at night and about 12 kilometers on weekdays. 
 
 Professor Lee Jung-hoon said we have not heard the end of the tensions. 
 
 "When we have the psychological warfare -- the leaflets or the loudspeakers -- basically the message is: the current leader is doing a very bad job, that their human rights are being violated, and that there's a much better world outside that they should be aware of," said Lee, an associate professor of international relations at Yonsei University in Seoul. 
 
 He said North Korea will not take kindly to criticism against Kim. 
 
 "For them Kim Jong Un, as his father and his father's father was, is not just a political leader, he's a deity figure," he said. "For the leadership, just the fact that there's the public condemnation and criticism of this godlike figure is just totally unacceptable." 
 
 And North Korea, he said, will have some sort of reaction. 
 
 "Absolutely they will respond," he said. "I can't say in what way." 
 
 U.N. Command condemns truce violations 
 
 The U.S.-led United Nations Command in Korea said that its investigation into the explosions found that the North's Korean People's Army had breached several parts of the armistice on the Korean Peninsula by planting landmines along a South Korean patrol route in the southern half of the demilitarized zone. 
 
 "The United Nations Command condemns these violations of the Armistice Agreement, and will call for a general officer level-dialog with the Korean People's Army," the U.N. Command statement said. 
 
 The U.N. Command, which monitors the armistice, said that the investigation had found that the wooden box landmines were recently planted, ruling out the possibility that they were old mines that might have been displaced by rain or other elements over the years. 
 
 Staff members from South Korea, the United States, New Zealand and Colombia took part in the investigation, the U.N. Command said. 
 
 Previous border tensions 
 
 The demilitarized zone has divided North and South Korea since the Korean War ended in 1953 with an armistice rather than a formal peace treaty. As a result, the two countries technically remain at war. 
 
 Tension has flared in the past around sensitive points on the their de facto border, including North Korea's shelling of an island in 2010 that killed two South Korean marines. 
 
 Roughly 28,000 U.S. troops are based in South Korea.
– The last top-level meeting between North and South Korea took place 11 years ago, and tensions have since "risen dramatically," per the Los Angeles Times. And so South Korea is offering an olive branch ahead of this week's summit, silencing the speakers it uses along the border to spew K-pop tunes, weather reports, and other propaganda. South Korea's Defense Ministry said muting the speakers in the Demilitarized Zone was done to "ease military tensions and create a peaceful mood for the meeting," per the New York Times. "We hope that our move today will result in South and North Korea ending mutual slandering and propaganda against each other and creating a peaceful new beginning." South Korea says the speakers—which have annoyed the North so much in the past they've been shot at, per CNN—were turned off early Monday, per the BBC. Loudspeakers have been used by both sides as propaganda producers along the border, although the South's are said to be much louder and more powerful than the North's. Using the speakers to tamp down the cult of personality around North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has been a main goal of the South; one tactic both sides engage in is to use the speakers to try to cajole soldiers to cross over to the other side. Although the speakers were muffled after the first summit in 2000, they were plugged back in as the relationship between the two nations worsened, a deterioration exacerbated by the North's nuclear tests. South Korean officials say the North is expected to also turn off its loudspeakers as a gesture of goodwill this time around. The summit in the border "truce village" of Panmunjom reportedly could result in the formal ending of the Korean War.