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.
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 sabre rattling. Under Kim, Pyongyang has veered towards 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.
The souring of ties is increasingly affecting the lives of people living along the demilitarised zone between North and South Korea, where Kim’s growing hostilities towards the South have taken the form of noise bombardment.
“It’s bombing without shells,” 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.”
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, Kim has shifted the course of his country’s external relations, turning increasingly hostile towards South Korea, in particular.
Some analysts say that by raising tensions, Kim was building the case for why the next American President needed to engage with him as he sought an easing of international sanctions in return for agreeing to contain his nuclear programme. The impending return of Trump, who is now President-elect and with whom 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 Kim’s recent rhetoric towards the South reflected a fundamental shift, channelling 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 Kim “a murderous dictator” or “pig” and urged North Koreans to overthrow his government.
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.
Shortly after she spoke, the afternoon offensive started with faint metallic howls coming across the border.
New York Times News Service
