Loud, eerie noises from North Korean speakers take a toll on villagers across border

This is part 1 of a 3-part series: Along the DMZ: Life at the Korean border.

Read a version of this story in Korean

The eerie ghost-like wails make it another restless night in Dangsan-ri, a South Korean village close to the heavily fortified border with North Korea. Frightened children toss and turn as their parents adjust earplugs in vain.

For the past five months, North Korea has been blaring ominous noises -- howling wolves, clanging gongs and other irritating sounds -- from speakers within their half of the Demilitarized Zone, or DMZ, which separates the two countries. The broadcasts are meant to harass people living in communities on the southern side of the border.

“My kids keep waking up when they hear the noise,” Ahn Mi-hee, a mother of two, told RFA Korean. “Yesterday the noise lasted until 3 a.m. They couldn’t sleep deeply and I can’t say how many hours they slept.”

Ahn says the lack of sleep has weakened her children’s immune systems, causing them to develop canker sores and tonsillitis. Other residents complain of vision problems that doctors say may be caused by stress.

A nearby mental health and welfare center has been distributing earplugs and acupressure massage balls, and counselors on staff are helping residents cope.

Residents in another town near the border are even traveling to dormitories a half hour’s drive away so they can sleep better.

Loudspeaker wars

The ominous noises are the latest volley in the loudspeaker wars that have been persisting off and on for decades between North and South Korea.

But whenever the two sides agree to stop, it has been South Korea that starts it up again -- blasting news and recently, catchy K-pop tunes across the border.

South Korea began using loudspeakers to broadcast into North Korea in 1963, and the North set up its own loudspeakers shortly after.

Every day both sides blared their messages across the border until 2004, when they agreed to stop the broadcasts after negotiations.

But the South started them up again in 2015 after South Korean soldiers were injured by a North Korean landmine inside the DMZ.

In 2018, the two countries again agreed to halt the broadcasts after a rare summit between their leaders.

But in June, after a six-year hiatus, Seoul resumed its broadcasts in retaliation for Pyongyang having sent trash-filled balloons to the South in the previous month.

In the past, North Korea’s loudspeakers had blared propaganda, insulting the government in Seoul as a “puppet” of the United States or encouraging South Korean soldiers to defect to the “paradise” in the North.

The eerie, howling sounds, however, are new -- and the noise pollution is taking a toll on the residents’ physical and mental health, they say.

“I just get nervous, and my mind gets irritated,” said one resident among dozens in the waiting room at the town’s health clinic. “It ruins my mood starting each morning… I’m afraid I might get dementia from this.”

The resident, who asked not to be identified because she didn’t want to appear in the media, said the noise is so bad that she envied her deaf neighbor across the street.

‘I’m begging you!"

Ahn, the mother of the two children, said it would be best if South Korea took the lead and stopped their broadcasts. It could then urge North Korea to do the same, she said.

In October, Ahn made an impassioned plea to lawmakers in Seoul, kneeling before them, asking them to shut off the loudspeakers.

“I am begging you! Please!” she exclaimed. “Our kids are here today too and ...” Government officials interrupted, telling her her to return to her seat, saying no change in policy was expected.

When local and national government officials visited Dangsan-ri several times between September and November to assess the situation, many residents urged them to stop the broadcasts, Ahn’s father and the village’s leader Ahn Hyo-chul said.

But the broadcasts from both sides continue every day.

“The answer from the Ministry of Defense was, ‘No. We can’t stop it because our country cannot be outdone by North Korea,’” the elder Ahn said.

“For the sake of each side, we should be first to turn them off, but they keep saying ‘no,’” his daughter said. “It’s an emotional fight.”

Peace and quiet

Ironically, Ahn and her family moved to Dangsan-ri in 2021-- across the street from her father’s house--to get away from noisy neighbors in their apartment building.

They thought moving nearer to his house would give them some peace and quiet. And both North and South Korea had agreed to stop the loudspeaker broadcasts, so they assumed that would continue.

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But the move actually brought them closer to the border, and made the strange noises louder than they would have been if they had stayed in the apartment building.

The elder Ahn said the loudspeakers were located 1.7 kilometers (about 1 mile) from the village, gesturing toward a mountain beyond the Han River, which divides North from South in this part of the country.

(RFA)

“If you look right there, there’s a white square structure on that mountain,” he said. “If you ask me what the sound is like, how should I answer? It’s strange, peculiar, and it’s not the same every day -- it changes.”

He says that since the noises restarted, he has started seeing double, but an ophthalmologist said there was nothing wrong with his eyes. When he visited the neurology department of a large hospital, they said stress was probably affecting the nerve connecting his eyes to the brain.

Sleep commuting

The noise is so bad that some people have had to find elsewhere to sleep -- they hope temporarily.

The village of Daeseongdong lies within the DMZ, around 50 kilometers (about 30 miles) north of Seoul and just east of the North Korean city of Kaesong. Provincial officials are allowing village residents who can’t bear the noise to sleep in dormitories about a 30-minute drive away.

Residents say it’s worth the hassle -- that they don’t get headaches any more, and that they can get moral support from other residents facing the same predicament.

“When we come here, we can talk and comfort each other,” said one resident, who like all other unnamed sources in this report asked not to be identified. “We feel so much better here and we spend our time watching TV.”

Still, the dormitories are small and spartan. They are typical of student housing, with two desks and two beds, and not much else.

“We have been coming here for more than a month, so I have eye drops and other medicines here,” a second resident said, displaying her various probiotics supplements and collagen facial treatments. “I also brought an ice pack to cool my repressed anger.”

‘Refugees from war’

The first resident said she had to visit a clinic because using earplugs every day caused her ears to discharge.

“We are living the life of refugees from war,” she said.

She said that they have lived in the DMZ for more than 50 years and have experienced many things, from abductions to accidentally crossing the military demarcation line themselves, but this is the first time they have experienced “hell like this.”

The previous round of broadcasts, between 2015 and 2018, though annoying, were not as bad, she said.

The noises in this round “are not even human,” she said. “How can they torture people with noises like that?”

The South Korean broadcasts, not just the North Korean ones, are also making their lives difficult, they said.

“When I’m out of the house, I can hear theirs and ours. It’s a total mess,” the third resident said.

“It would be nice if both sides don’t do it and don’t broadcast,” the first resident said. “But the politics say no.”

Translated by Claire S. Lee and Leejin J. Chung. Edited by Eugene Whong and Malcolm Foster.