Lee Yong Byeon

The howling begins just after sunset, a low, guttural wail that claws its way into your chest like an unwelcome specter. It grows louder, a cacophony of scraping, barking, and quacking, as if hell’s orchestra has been set loose. I sit on my porch, a glass of soju trembling in my hand, knowing what’s coming but still unprepared for it. My wife, Mina, has already barricaded herself inside, clutching her sleeping pills like a lifeline.

This is life now in Siam-ri, South Korea, my home for fifty years, nestled uncomfortably close to the North Korean border. My farm—once a sanctuary of rolling green and the laughter of hens—feels alien under this constant assault. The cows, poor things, haven’t calmed in weeks. They shuffle nervously in their pens, their milk production down to nearly nothing.

“It’s like the noise crawls through the walls,” my neighbor, Joon, said the other day. He’s right. Even with every door and window sealed, the sounds worm their way in, relentless.

It all started in the summer. North Korea’s balloons came first, laden with trash and worse. Our government retaliated with K-pop loudspeakers, and now we’re caught in the crossfire of this absurd war of noise. My friend Dae-jun jokes that it’s the loudest Cold War in history. But no one laughs for long.

The village headman, Lee Tae-song, keeps urging the government to stop the broadcasts. “They’ll stop if we stop,” he says, but Seoul isn’t listening. And North Korea’s threats grow darker by the day, with whispers of war carried on the wind.

I sip the soju and stare at the border, where the towering speakers stand like grim sentinels. For a brief moment, I think about leaving—selling the farm, moving to Busan, somewhere far from this madness. But where would we go? This land is ours, and abandoning it feels like surrendering to a battle we never chose to fight.

Mina steps onto the porch, her face pale and drawn. She doesn’t speak, just looks at me with eyes that have forgotten sleep. I pour her a glass and we sit in silence, listening to the night scream around us.

If this doesn’t stop soon, I think, it won’t just be the cows or the crops that wither. It’ll be us.