GANGHWA-GUN, Nov 20 (AFP): 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 told AFP. "All we hear is this noise." Since July, North Korea has been broadcasting the noises every day from loudspeakers along the border.
The noise 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.
The northern point of Ganghwa-an island in the Han river estuary on the Yellow Sea-is about two kilometres (a mile) from the North.
When AFP visited, the nighttime broadcast included what sounded like the screams of people dying on the battlefield, the crack of gunfire, bombs exploding, along with chilling music that started at 11:00 pm.
North Korea has done propaganda broadcasts before, said 66-year-old villager Ahn Hyo-cheol, but they used to focus on criticising the South's leaders, or idealising the North.
Now "there were sounds like a wolf howling, and ghostly sounds", he said. "It feels unpleasant and gives me chills. It's really feels bizarre." Ganghwa county councillor Park Heung-yeol said that the new broadcasts were "not just regime propaganda-it's genuinely intended to torment
people".
Experts said the new broadcasts almost meet the criteria for a torture campaign. "Almost every regime has used noise torture and sleep deprivation," Rory Cox, a historian at University of St Andrews, told AFP.
