Under the light of a moon partially obscured by clouds, the eyes of a dozen deer glow uncannily in the dark on South Korea's island of Anma.

They destroy crops and damage trees in their nocturnal wanderings, but by day, the spot is deceptively peaceful, though the humans here must live behind fences, penned into homes and fields, as the animals outnumber them seven to one.

The people of a village nestled beside peaks and a rocky shoreline near South Jeolla province have all but given up their fight against the deer, whose numbers have exploded since the mid-1980s.