Gunshots, screams, terrifying laughter: South Korea’s border island of Ganghwa is being bombarded with blood-curdling sounds at night, part of a new campaign by the nuclear-armed North to drive residents to despair. going.
Before it began, Kim Yun-suk, 56, fell asleep to the buzzing of insects and woke up to the chirping of birds. Now, she wakes up every night to the sound of a low-budget horror movie on high volume.
“The peaceful sounds of nature… have now disappeared,” Kim told AFP.
“That’s the only noise we hear.”
The campaign is the latest manifestation of steadily deteriorating relations between the two Koreas this year, in which Pyongyang has tested more powerful missiles and bombarded the South with garbage-carrying balloons.
Since July, North Korea has been broadcasting large amounts of noise from loudspeakers along the border almost every day.
The northern point of Ganghwa – an island at the mouth of the Han River on the Yellow Sea – is only two kilometers (one mile) to the north.
When AFP visited, nightly broadcasts included the screams of people dying on the battlefield, the sounds of gunfire, the explosions of bombs, as well as cold music starting at 11:00 pm.
Eerie sounds echoed across the almost pitch black fields, as the stars in the clear night sky twinkled beautifully with the coastal street lights, creating a strange and unsettling contrast.
North Korea has made propaganda broadcasts before, but they tended to focus on criticizing the South’s leaders or idealizing the North, said villager Ahn Hyo-cheol, 66.
Now “there were sounds like a wolf howling, and ghostly sounds”, he said.
“It feels unpleasant and I get chills. It feels weird.”
Ganghwa County councilor Park Heung-yeol said the new broadcast was “not just regime propaganda – it is actually intended to torment the people”.
– torture –
Experts said the new broadcasts almost met the criteria for a torture campaign.
“Almost every regime has used noise torture and sleep deprivation,” historian Rory Cox of the University of St Andrews told AFP.
“It is very common and does not leave any physical scars, so it cannot be ruled out.”
Experts say exposure to noise levels above 60 decibels at night increases the risk of sleep disorders, but AFP tracked noise levels as high as 80 decibels late at night in Ganghwa during a recent visit. .
“I find myself taking headache medicine almost all the time,” An Mi-hee, 37, told AFP. He said prolonged sleep deprivation due to noise also causes anxiety, eye pain, facial tremors and drowsiness.
“Our children also can’t sleep, so they have mouth ulcers and are dozing off in school.”
Upset and desperate, Ann traveled to Seoul and knelt down to seek a solution from lawmakers in the National Assembly, crying as she described the island’s suffering.
“It would actually be better if there were floods, fires, or even earthquakes, because those events have a clear recovery timeline,” An said.
“We don’t know whether it will continue until the person giving the order in North Korea dies, or whether it can be stopped at any time. We just don’t know.”
– ’70s horror film’ –
Audio experts told AFP that the noise disturbing residents of Ganghwa Island appears to be a rudimentary mix of clips from a sound library, usually common in any TV or radio broadcaster.
The sound effects “are like something found in a South Korean horror film in the 70s and 80s,” said sound engineer Hwang Kwon-ik.
The two Koreas remained technically at war since the conflict from 1950 to 1953 ended in an armistice rather than a peace treaty.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un this year declared Seoul his “major enemy” and increased weapons testing and forged closer military ties with Russia.
The isolated and impoverished North is known to be extremely sensitive about its citizens’ access to South Korean pop culture.
Some experts have suggested the latest broadcast may be aimed at preventing North Korean troops from listening to the South’s own propaganda broadcasts, which typically include K-pop songs and international news.
In August, just weeks after South Korea resumed K-pop broadcasts in response to Pyongyang flying balloons carrying garbage into the South, a North Korean soldier fled across the heavily fortified border on foot.
But Lee Su-yong, audio production professor at the Dong-ah Institute of Media and Arts, said, “If there is a sound coming from the north that you want to hide, the sound (you use to cover it) can also Should be directed towards the north.”
“It seems less about hiding the noise and more about causing pain to people in the south,” he told AFP.
Resident Choi Hyeong-chan, 60, said the South Korean government has failed to protect vulnerable civilians at the border.
“They should come here and just try to live with these sounds for ten days,” he told AFP, referring to authorities in Seoul.
“I doubt they’ll be able to endure even a day.”
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
