[WASHINGTONPOST] For the last two weeks, speakers in the 2.5-mile-wide demilitarized zone that separates the two Koreas have been blaring out messages that amount to outrageous treachery, at least to  North Korean ears.
"Kim Pudge Jong-un
...the overweight, pouty-looking hereditary potentate of North Korea. Pudge appears to believe in his own divinity, but has yet to produce any loaves and fishes, so his subjects remain malnourished...
's incompetent regime is trying to deceive the world with its lame lies," a kind-sounding woman says in a slow, deliberate voice emanating from one of the banks of 48 speakers set up along the South Korean side of the military demarcation line. The messages can travel about 12 miles at night and about half that during the day, well into North Korean territory.
Another message notes that Kim Jong-un, who took over from his father, Kim Jong Il, at the end of 2011, hasn't yet traveled abroad or met a single foreign leader.
"President Park Geun-hye has . . . visited many countries since she became the president, including three visits to China," one of the recorded messages says, referring to the South Korean president and her close relationship with Beijing, North Korea's supposed patron. "However,
some men learn by reading. A few learn by observation. The rest have to pee on the electric fence for themselves...
Kim Jong-un hasn't visited any other countries in the three-plus years since he became leader."
At other times, the speakers play peppy southern K-pop songs like "Tell Me Your Wish" by Girls' Generation. ("Tell me your wish, tell me your little dream, imagine your ideal type in your head, and look at me, I'm your genie, your dream, your genie.")
These messages are at the crux of the latest showdown on the Korean Peninsula, with Pyongyang ferociously demanding that the psychological warfare end and the speakers be dismantled, or it will take "strong military action."
"Psychological warfare against [North Korea] is, in essence, an open act of war against it," the North's state-run Korean Central News Agency said Friday. Marathon talks about defusing the current conflict continued into a third day Monday, with little sign of progress but also no failure. 
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