Gunshots, screams, eerie laughter: South Korea’s border island Ganghwa is being bombarded nightly with blood-curdling sounds, part of a new campaign by the nuclear-armed North that is driving residents to despair.
Before it started, 56-year-old Kim Yun-suk fell asleep to the hum of insects and woke to the chirping of birds. Now, she is kept awake every night by what sounds like the soundtrack of a low-budget horror movie at top volume.
“The peaceful sounds of nature... have now been drowned out,” Kim said.
Photo: AFP
“All we hear is this noise.”
The campaign is the latest manifestation of steadily declining ties between the two Koreas this year, which have also seen Pyongyang test ever more powerful missiles and bombard the South with trash-carrying balloons.
Since July, North Korea has been broadcasting the noises for huge chunks of almost every day from loudspeakers along the border.
The northern point of Ganghwa — an island in the Han river estuary on the Yellow Sea — is only about two kilometers from the North.
The nighttime broadcast includes what sounded like the screams of people dying on the battlefield, the crack of gunfire, bombs exploding, along with chilling music that starts at 11pm.
In the almost pitch-black fields, sinister noises echoed as the stars in the clear night sky shone beautifully alongside the coastal road lights, creating a stark and unsettling contrast.
North Korea has done propaganda broadcasts before, said 66-year-old villager Ahn Hyo-cheol, but they used to focus on criticizing the South’s leaders, or idealizing the North.
Now “there are sounds like a wolf howling, and ghostly sounds,” he said. “It feels unpleasant and gives me chills. It really feels bizarre.”
Ganghwa county councilor Park Heung-yeol said the new broadcasts were “not just regime propaganda — it’s genuinely intended to torment people.”
TORTURE
Experts said the new broadcasts almost meet the criteria for a torture campaign.
“Almost every regime has used noise torture and sleep deprivation,” said Rory Cox, a historian at the University of St Andrews.
“It is very common and leaves no physical scarring, therefore making it deniable.”
Exposure to noise levels above 60 decibels at night increases the risk of sleep disorders, experts said. Levels of up to 80 decibels late at night on Ganghwa have been recorded.
“I find myself taking headache medicine almost all the time,” said An Mi-hee, 37, adding that prolonged sleep deprivation due to the noise has also led to anxiety, eye pain, facial tremors and drowsiness.
“Our kids can’t sleep either, so they’ve developed mouth sores and are dozing off at school.”
Distraught and desperate, An traveled to Seoul and got on her knees to beg lawmakers at the National Assembly to find a solution, breaking down in tears as she described the island’s suffering.
“It would actually be better if there were a flood, a fire or even an earthquake, because those events have a clear recovery timeline,” An said.
“We have no idea if this will go on until the person in North Korea who gives the orders dies, or if it could be cut off at any moment. We just don’t know.”
‘HORROR FLICK’
The noise tormenting Ganghwa island residents appeared to be a rudimentary mix of clips from a sound library, typically common at any TV or radio broadcasters, audio experts said. 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 remain technically at war since the 1950 to 1953 conflict ended in an armistice not a peace treaty.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un this year declared Seoul his “principal enemy” and has ramped up weapons testing and built closer military ties with Russia.
The isolated and impoverished North is known to be extremely sensitive about its citizens gaining access to South Korean pop culture. Some experts have suggested the latest broadcasts could be aimed at preventing North Korean soldiers from hearing the South’s own propaganda broadcasts, which typically feature K-pop songs and international news.
In August, just weeks after South Korea resumed K-pop broadcasts in response to Pyongyang floating trash-carrying balloons south, a North Korean soldier defected by crossing the heavily fortified border on foot.
But Lee Su-yong, an audio production professor at the Dong-Ah Institute of Media and Arts, said: “If there is sound coming towards the North that you want to mask, then the sound (you use to cover it) must also be directed toward the North.”
“It seems less about masking noise and more about inflicting pain on people in the South,” he said.
Choi Hyoung-chan, a 60-year-old resident, said the South Korean government had failed to protect vulnerable civilians on the frontier.
“They should come here and try to live with these sounds for just 10 days,” he said, referring to officials in Seoul.
“I doubt they could even endure a single day.”
Anyone who has been to Alishan (阿里山) is familiar with the railroad there: one line comes up from Chiayi City past the sacred tree site, while another line goes up to the sunrise viewing platform at Zhushan (祝山). Of course, as a center of logging operations for over 60 years, Alishan did have more rail lines in the past. Are any of these still around? Are they easily accessible? Are they worth visiting? The answer to all three of these questions is emphatically: Yes! One of these lines ran from Alishan all the way up to the base of Jade Mountain. Its
The only geopolitical certainty is that massive change is coming. Three macro trends are only just starting to accelerate, forming a very disruptive background to an already unsettled future. One is that technological transformations exponentially more consequential and rapid than anything prior are in their infancy, and will play out like several simultaneous industrial revolutions. ROBOT REVOLUTION It is still early days, but impacts are starting to be felt. Just yesterday, this line appeared in an article: “To meet demands at Foxconn, factory planners are building physical AI-powered robotic factories with Omniverse and NVIDIA AI.” In other words, they used AI
Last month historian Stephen Wertheim of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace published an opinion piece in the New York Times with suggestions for an “America First” foreign policy for Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris. Of course China and Taiwan received a mention. “Under presidents Trump and Biden,” Wertheim contends, “the world’s top two powers have descended into open rivalry, with tensions over Taiwan coming to the fore.” After complaining that Washington is militarizing the Taiwan issue, he argues that “In truth, Beijing has long proved willing to tolerate the island’s self-rule so long as Taiwan does not declare independence
Big changes are afoot in global politics, which that are having a big impact on the global order, look set to continue and have the potential to completely reshape it. In my previous column we examined the three macro megatrends impacting the entire planet: Technology, demographics and climate. Below are international trends that are social, political, geopolitical and economic. While there will be some impact on Taiwan from all four, it is likely the first two will be minor, but the second two will likely change the course of Taiwan’s history. The re-election of Donald Trump as president of the US
RSS