Loudspeakers in North Korea are visible from Paju, Gyeonggi Province in South Korea on Sept. 5, 2024. YonhapSEOUL, November 21 (AJP) - Residents living near the border with North Korea have been enduring deafening noise from loudspeaker broadcast blaring across the demilitarized zone for several months.
In July, South Korea resumed propaganda broadcasts in response to a series of North Korean provocations including its bizarre campaign of sending trash-filled balloons toward the South.
These loudspeaker broadcasts along the heavily fortified border are considered an effective form of psychological warfare feared by the North Korean regime, as they inform North Koreans about the outside world including South Korea's economic development.
But North Korea's tit-for-tat measure shortly came with vengeance, relaying mostly incomprehensible sounds and high-pitched, metal-grinding noises, and animal-like moans and screams, which seemed intended to prevent North Koreans from hearing South Korean broadcasts.
Villagers in Paju, Gyeonggi Province and nearby border towns say North Korean broadcasts have become their daily torment, with incessant wailing and howling noises that persist 24 hours a day, leaving them with sleepless nights for nearly six months.
According to a Paju official, noise levels in the area range from 80 to 135 decibels, well above the typical daily noise level of 50 decibels, and even louder than the sound of a plane taking off or landing, which reaches around 95 decibels.
Lee Wan-bae, a community leader of Tongilchon, a small village near the demilitarized zone, said, "Locals have been suffering from a double whammy of months-long scary noises and slow sales due to a decline in customers."
The village, home to about 400 people, used to draw hundreds of visitors annually including foreigners and those who have family members in North Korea, but the rural town now remains eerily empty with only disturbingly loud broadcasts filling the air.
Locals are complaining that they are on the brink of going out of business due to dwindling tourists and other customers amid escalating inter-Korean tensions.
One café owner there said, "Such creepy and spooky sounds from the North get even louder at night and get intensified when a southerly wind blows."
"I moved here in 2016. At the time, North Korean broadcasts were mostly about idolizing its 'dear leader' and praising achievements," he recalled. "But North Korea seems to take a different approach to ratchet up the intensity of its broadcasts by mixing ghostly, eerie sounds into them, which often feel even louder than ever. They have now become unbearable."
Livestock such as cattle and goats are not immune to these noises, as they are showing signs of usual symptoms like lethargic movements and loss of appetite, with some even having miscarriages.
But North Korea is unlikely to stop these disruptive broadcasts anytime soon, as a group of South Korean activists, mostly consisting of North Korean defectors here, continue to send balloons carrying propaganda leaflets toward the North.
"These activists argue that they are doing this for the human rights of North Koreans, but they also need to consider whether they are infringing on the human rights of others in the South," Han said.
Eerie sound from North Korean loudspeakers recorded in a border town in Paju. Courtesy of Paju Municipal Office
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