South Korean soldiers were seen pulling down banks of speakers that have blasted pop music, propaganda, news and weather reports into the North for the last two years, the Defence Ministry reported. North Korean soldiers did the same on their side.

The speakers had been in operation since 2016 but were turned off ahead of last week’s summit. They had been regarded as a key strategy in trying to get information into the North’s hermit state that has kept information under tight control.

Meanwhile activists in the South have carried on their ritual of flinging water bottles filled with rice and USB sticks loaded with K-pop songs into the ocean in the hope the tide carries them to the North.

It’s something North Korean defectors have done for more than two years with bottles also containing food, money, medicine and films on USB — all specially selected for particularly revealing outfits to highlight the degree of control in the communist state.

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Former North Korean political prisoner Jung Gwang-il said the content “shows what freedom is”

“It’s no problem in South Korea but banned in the North. That’s what we want to show,” he said.

Another defector, Park Jung-oh, said: “We all lived in North Korea for at least 30, 40 years so we know exactly what the people there want and need.”

“When they watch the content of our USB sticks, they will realise that they have been tricked by their government,” he added.

Thae Yong Ho, North Korea’s former deputy ambassador to Britain who defected to the South in 2016, once described the USB sticks as an effective tactic for spreading information in the isolated country, despite efforts by the Kim regime to block them.

US activist Susan Scholte called removing the loudspeakers a “huge mistake”.

“I think any way that you can get information in should be increased, not diminished,” Scholte told AFP. “Any information that you can get into North Korea is a peaceful, nonviolent way to bring about awareness and change.”

Last week North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said he would suspend nuclear testing and committed to co-operating with South Korea on a range of economic, diplomatic and military issues.

The abrupt U-turn saw the leader promise to close the Punggy-ri test site, where all six of North Korea’s atomic bomb tests occurred. While seen as positive, the move has been met with scepticism by analysts who say Kim Jong Un is gaining the benefits of engaging in diplomacy without being specific about what he would give up.

The language of the summit could also prove a sticking point, with Kim and South Korean leader Moon Jae In, agreeing to achieve “a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula through complete denuclearisation.”

North Korea has long said the term “denuclearisation 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.

It’s unclear if the US will agree to this, and preparations for talks between President Trump and Kim Jong Un are underway, potentially to take place at the same border village of Panmunjom.