North Korea deploys a new weapon against the South: Unbearable noise

DANGSAN-RI, South Korea – 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 Ms 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, Mr Kim Jong-un, and the South’s president, Mr 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 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 Russia, 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 Demilitarised Zone (DMZ) 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 villager An Seon-hoe, 67. “At least they were human sounds and we could bear them.”

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 4km-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 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 programme.

The impending return of 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 Dr 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.

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.

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 Prof 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 minimise 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.

Political leaders have visited Dangsan to offer their sympathies. During a parliamentary hearing last month, a teary An Mi-hee 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 Dr 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, Mr 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.

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 Ms 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. NYTIMES