North Korea Deploys a New Weapon Against the South: Unbearable Noise

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North Korea Deploys a New Weapon Against the South: Unbearable Noise

Relations between the neighbors have sunk to the lowest level in years. Now, Pyongyang is blaring eerie sounds across the border that villagers say is making their lives hell.

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Large speakers in North Korea seen from Ganghwa Island, South Korea, in October. The residents of Dangsan village complain they can’t sleep because of the uncomfortable and mysterious sounds from the speakers.

By Choe Sang-Hun

Photographs and Video by Chang W. Lee

Reporting from Dangsan-ri, Gwanghwa Island, South Korea

Nov. 16, 2024, 12:01 a.m. ET

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Loud, crackly noises that sounded like an ominous, giant gong being beaten again and again washed over this village on a recent night. On other nights, some residents described hearing wolves howling, metal grinding together or ghosts screaming as if out of a horror movie. Others said they heard the sound of incoming artillery, or even a furious monkey pounding on a broken piano.

Although they heard different sounds at different times, people in this South Korean village on the border with North Korea all call themselves victims of “noise bombing,” saying they find the relentless barrage exhausting.

“It is driving us crazy,” said An Mi-hee, 37. “You can’t sleep at night.”

Since July, North Korea has amped up loudspeakers along its border with South Korea for 10 to 24 hours a day, broadcasting eerie noises that have aggravated South Korean villagers like no past propaganda broadcasts from the North ever did. The offensive is one of the most bizarre — and unbearable — consequences of deteriorating inter-Korean relations that have sunk to their lowest level in years under the North’s leader, Kim Jong-un, and the South’s president, Yoon Suk Yeol.

Video

Strange sounds from North Korea heard near the house of An Mi-hee, 37, which directly faces the speakers blasting noise across the border day and night.

For decades, the two Koreas — which never signed a peace treaty after the 1950-53 Korean War ended in a truce — have swung between conciliatory tones and saber rattling. Under Mr. Kim, Pyongyang has veered toward a more hawkish stance over the past few years. It has shut off all dialogue with Seoul and Washington, doubled down on testing nuclear-capable missiles and has vowed to treat South Korea not as a partner for reunification, but as an enemy that the North must annex should war break out.

In the South, Mr. Yoon has also adopted a more confrontational approach since taking office in 2022. He has called for spreading the idea of freedom to the North to penetrate the information blackout Mr. Kim relies on to maintain his totalitarian rule. South Korea has also expanded joint military drills with the United States and Japan, which involved aircraft carriers, strategic bombers and stealth jets, to deter Mr. Kim.

Complicating the global picture, North Korea this year strengthened its ties with Moscow, shipping weapons and troops to aid its war against Ukraine and striking a mutual defense pact in the event either is attacked.

The souring of ties is increasingly affecting the lives of people living along the Demilitarized Zone between North and South Korea, where Mr. Kim’s growing hostilities toward the South have taken the form of noise bombardment.

“It’s bombing without shells,” Ms. An said. As she spoke from her living room, the distant gong-like sounds outside raged on, the noise seeming to grow louder as the night deepened. “The worst part is that we don’t know when it will end, whether it will ever end.”

Ms. An’s village, Dangsan, has a population of 354, with most residents in their 60s and older. It has been one of the hardest hit by North Korea’s psychological warfare. Sitting on the northern shore of Gwanghwa Island, west of Seoul, it is only a mile from North Korea, separated by a stretch of gray sea.

“I wish they would just broadcast their old insults and propaganda songs,” said An Seon-hoe, 67, another villager. “At least they were human sounds and we could bear them.”

Image

An Seon-hoe, 67, at his home in Ganghwa Island. He said he installed Styrofoam in his room to block out the sounds, but it didn’t help.

Since the 1960s, loudspeakers have been as much a fixture of the DMZ as razor-wire fences and land-mine warning signs. People living along the border endured propaganda broadcasts as a part of frontier life, as the rival governments switched them on and off, depending on the political mood.

When they were on, both sides insulted each other’s leaders as “puppets.” A female voice that drifted across the 2.5-mile-wide DMZ beckoned South Korean soldiers to defect to “the people’s paradise” in the North. South Korean broadcasts tried to entice North Korean troops with sugary K-pop tunes.

The latest bombardment from the North contains no human sound or music — just nonstop noises that villagers find hard to describe, other than calling them “irritating” and “stressful.” They have blamed them for insomnia, headaches, and even goats miscarrying, hens laying fewer eggs and the sudden death of a pet dog.

The noise was part of a series of steps North Korea has taken to retaliate against what it called South Korean hostility. Recent events might explain why the sounds have become so intolerable.

Since his negotiations with President Donald J. Trump collapsed in 2019, Mr. Kim has shifted the course of his country’s external relations, turning increasingly hostile toward South Korea, in particular.

Some analysts say that by raising tensions, Mr. Kim was building the case for why the next American president needed to engage with him as he seeks an easing of international sanctions in return for agreeing to contain his nuclear program. The impending return of Mr. Trump, who is now president-elect and with whom Mr. Kim met three times during his first term, could increase the chances of the two countries’ engaging again after years of silence.

But others say Mr. Kim’s recent rhetoric toward the South reflected a fundamental shift, channeling his belief in the advent of a “neo-cold war.”

The catalyst for this change was waves of anti-Kim propaganda leaflets that were sent across the border via balloons by North Korean defectors living in the South, said Koh Yu-hwan, a former head of the Korea Institute for National Unification. These leaflets called Mr. Kim “a murderous dictator” or “pig” and urged North Koreans to overthrow his government.

Image

Large speakers in North Korea are visible from Ganghwa Island. There are others installed across from Taesung Freedom Village in the Demilitarized Zone between North and South Korea.

In May, North Korea retaliated by sending its own balloons to the South, loaded with trash in response to what Pyongyang called political “filth” from the South.

The map locates the village of Dangsan on Ganghwa Island in South Korea, just south of the Demilitarized Zone. It also locates Taesung Freedom Village, northeast of Dangsan.

40 miles

Pyongyang

Sea of

Japan

NORTH KOREA

DEMILITARIZED ZONE

Taesung Freedom Village

Dangsan

Seoul

GANGHWA

ISLAND

SOUTH KOREA

Yellow Sea

By The New York Times

Weeks later, South Korea ended a six-year hiatus in propaganda broadcasts, switching its loudspeakers back on to blast K-pop and news to the North. The North responded with its blasts of strange, nerve-racking noises.

“North Korea knows its propaganda no longer works on South Koreans,” said Kang Dong-wan, an expert on North Korea at Dong-A University in the South. “The goal of its loudspeakers has changed from spreading propaganda to forcing South Korea to stop its own broadcasts and leaflets.”

Until inter-Korean tensions caught up with them, Dangsan residents were proud of their quiet rural life despite their proximity to the border. They grew red peppers and thick radishes in their gardens. Cats sauntered under persimmon trees strung with heavy fruits. Wild geese took off from harvested rice fields in a chorus of honking.

These days, however, villagers keep their windows shut to minimize the noise from North Korea. Some have installed Styrofoam over them for extra insulation. Children no longer play on outdoor trampolines because of the noise.

Image

An Mi-hee, 37, and her child playing with a friend at her home in Ganghwa Island, in October. Villagers are keeping their windows shut to reduce the noise from North Korea.

Political leaders have visited Dangsan to offer their sympathies. During a parliamentary hearing last month, a teary Ms. An knelt before lawmakers, asking for a solution. But officials suggested neither a plan to de-escalate the psychological war with the North nor a solution to the noise, villagers said, other than offering double-pane windows for villagers and medication for their livestock to better endure the stress caused by the noise.

“The solution is for the two Koreas to recommit themselves to their old agreements not to slander each other,” said Mr. Koh, of the Korea Institute. But things have only worsened. Last month, North Korea demolished all railway and road links between the two Koreas with dynamite. This month, it disrupted GPS signals near the western border with the South, affecting some civilian ship and air traffic, according to the South Korean military.

Residents near the border have grown weary of ebbs and flows of tensions on the peninsula. Ms. An’s father, An Hyo-cheol, 67, the village chief of Dangsan, urged the South Korean government to stop what some villagers called a “childish” shoving match with the North. He demanded that the Yoon administration stop all propaganda broadcasts and ban leaflets, to encourage the North to follow suit.

Image

An Hyo-cheol, 67, at his home in Dangsan, implored the South Korean government to halt its sparring with the North.

Dangsan residents said they were being sacrificed in the uncompromising political rivalry between the two Koreas.

“The government has abandoned us because we are small in number and mostly old people,” said Park Hae-sook, 75, a villager. “I can’t imagine the government doing nothing if Seoul suffered the same noise attack as we have.”

Shortly after she spoke, the afternoon offensive started with faint metallic howls coming across the border.

Choe Sang-Hun is the lead reporter for The Times in Seoul, covering South and North Korea. More about Choe Sang-Hun

Chang W. Lee has been a photographer for The Times for 30 years, covering events throughout the world. He is currently based in Seoul. Follow him on Instagram @nytchangster. More about Chang W. Lee