A trip to the DMZ

As I have recounted, on my way home to see family in Australia in December I stopped in South Korea for a few days. The trip was principally a city break: I had a look around Seoul. Seoul was in many ways very impressive, but it was also a city striking in its normality. It is a modern, technologically advanced city. The subway system works extremely well. There are McDonald’s and Starbucks outlets everywhere (this is a rare market where a local McDonald’s clone has apparently outdone the original. On the other hand, all Korea’s coffee shops belong to Starbucks). Buildings are modern. People love their mobile phones. Certain Korean brands are perhaps more prominent than they would be in a more balanced economy and they seem to realise this though. Samsung and LG, for instance, seem to market many of their products under local brand names, leading to iconic and very familiar Korean products being present in Korea only under unfamiliar brand names. The city feels extremely safe, it is very clean, and it is about as low stress a place to visit as can be imagined.

The only hint that complete insanity begins less than 50km to the north is only a small one: the fact that uniformed soldiers are to be seen regularly on the streets. There is nothing threatening or remarkable about this. These are just ordinary 19 year old guys in the middle of their compulsory military service. You see them catching the subway, or having lunch in fast food restaurants. These are just young guys going about their lives, who happen to be wearing fatigues. There are many other cities where you will see the same thing. However, now that most developed countries have abandoned compulsory military service, these cities are fewer than they used to be, particularly in countries as advanced as South Korea.

But Korea has retained compulsory military service, and this is because the most heavily defended border in the world lies less than 50km north of Seoul. Of course, I had to go to see it. One can only go into the Demilitarized Zone by going on an organised tour. These are run by both the local USO and by local Korean tour companies. The guidebook recommended the USO tour as “the best tour” but the days on which it ran were not convenient with my schedule, so I booked myself on one of the locally run tours. This turned out to be just fine. However, perhaps because most English speakers go on the USO tour, English speakers were in a minority on this tour. Most of the people on the bus were Japanese. Only six of us were English speakers (myself, three Singaporeans, and an American engineer based in Seoul who was on the tour with his adult daughter who was visiting him for Christmas). There was also a Korean couple. This is apparently rare. Korean civilians are not normally allowed in the DMZ, and those that wish to go on the tour have to apply six months in advance, in which time a thorough background check is undertaken on them, apparently to make sure they are not the sorts of people who are likely to wish to defect to North Korea or otherwise allow the enemy to gain propaganda points (this seems like a deeply peculiar thing to do, but apparently once in a while someone is nutty enough to want to try it). In any event, their presence on the tour was apparently quite unusual, as the English speaking guide remarked upon their presence. And of course, there was no ‘Korean speaking guide’ (although the guides were both Korean and thus clearly spoke the language). The tour was conducted in Japanese and English, and the English and Japanese speaking guides took turns to speak.

When you drive north from Seoul, you realise what a huge metropolitan area the city is at the centre of. (It depends how you measure it, but there is a case for Seoul as the second largest city in the world, which is doubly impressive given that the population was reduced to a few hundred thousand during the Korean War). Urban areas and manufacturing centres are beside the road almost all the way to the border (the LG/Phillips LCD display factory is no more than 10km from the DMZ, so our flat screen television supply is one of the first things we shall lose upon the start of World War 3).

As we drove north the guides gave us various useful pieces of information, such as that we should not run off into the bushes “as there are many minefields”, and that it was very important that we not taunt or gesture at any North Koreans, as if we did they would take our photographs and use them for propaganda purposes against the free world (also, our tour would likely be terminated immediately).

Then we crossed the river Imjin,and normality ceased. This is not the start of the DMZ, but it is the start of what may be referred to as the ‘Militarized Zone’, which is a controlled area occupied by South Korean troops and their weapons. Our passports were checked as we entered this zone, and we were not permitted to take photographs as we went through it. The bridge across the river had barriers across it, compelling all traffic to take a zig-zag route across it, presumably designed to slow down any North Korean invasion. After driving across it there was another fenced border, and passports were checked again (this time by a soldier in a United Nations uniform, but still a Korean) before we entered a region technically under United Nations (in practice United States) command rather than South Korean command.

The tour was technically of the Joint Security Area (JSA), in the area of the former village of Panmunjom, which is the only place in the DMZ at which soldiers from the two sides actually face one another. This is where the truce was signed at the end of the Korean war in 1953. In that truce, the so called ‘military demarcation line’ was drawn, marking where the zones of northern and southern occupation met when the ceasefire occurred (for practical purposes this is the border between North and South Korea, but as no peace treaty has ever been signed, the war technically goes on and both countries lay claim to the entire peninsula). The DMZ is approximately 4km wide, but it is divided, half of it lying technically in North Korea and the other half technically in South Korea.

Rusting and deteriorating signs (in English and Korean on the south side, and in Chinese and Korean on the north) and marker posts indicate the demarcation line. In practice, most of the DMZ has not been entered by people in 50 years. In that time certain populations of animals have flourished in this human free environment, despite deer and bears losing occasional limbs to landmines. Some people claim that there are also leopards and tigers in the DMZ, although nobody seems able to confirm this.

However, the JSA is a small area which is occupied, and in which soldiers on the two sides look at each other, and in which negotiations between north and south Korea sometimes occur.

Prior to entering the DMZ and the JSA, we stopped at Camp Bonifas, the closest US post to the DMZ itself. Here we went into a briefing room where we were given a brief history of the Korean war, told what we were allowed to do and not do in the JSA, and were asked to sign a fairly ludicrous disclaimer in which we again agreed not to taunt the North Koreans, not to (with one exception that I will get to in a moment) under any circumstances walk across into North Korea and in which we agreed that we would not hold the United Nations, the United States of America, or South Korea responsible in the event of enemy action. We were given coloured badges to wear in the DMZ indicating that we were guests of the United Nations, and we were joined by an American military policeman who by his accent sounded like he came from the midwest somewhere. We were required to get onto an entirely different bus from that we had ridden from Seoul, presumably to prevent us from smuggling weapons into the DMZ, or smuggling iPods to Kim Jong Il, or something.

Anyway, it was time to enter the DMZ. We were once again not allowed to take photographs on this portion of the journey, but we had soon reached the JSA and Panmunjom. The first stop was the ‘conference room’, one of a number of huts that straddle the demarcation line, in which negotiations between north and south have taken place at various times over the decades. The line goes down the centre of not just the hut but the conference table in the centre of it, and indeed down the middle of the soldier who stands perfectly still at the end of the table

The conference room is the only place in the DMZ which is occupied by people from both North and South Korea, although at different times. North and South Korean tour groups enter it from different doors and at different times, but both visit the same place. In the room, one can and does technically enter North Korea. Prior to the axe murder incident of 1976 (which I shall get to in a moment), soldiers from both North and South Korea did simultaneously occupy the entire area, but after that event they agreed to stay on their own sides of the demarcation line, except in the conference room.

I mentioned a soldier standing perfectly still. In fact, a number of soldiers stand perfectly stationary at various places in the conference room, for our security, at least theoretically. We were told in the briefing room that soldiers have to stand stationary for several hours at a time, and that it is a very stressful job. I can imagine that it is, and it is made more stressful by tour groups entering the room and posing for photographs beside the soldiers, as they do, and as I did. The situation seems not unlike the guards outside Buckingham Palace, except that those are purely ceremonial, whereas these are…

These are what, precisely? I am not sure of the answer. The Buckingham Palace guards once performed a useful function, and over time the useful function eroded, so only the ceremonial and symbolic aspects remained. In the case of the soldiers in the conference room. There is certainly some useful function here. If I attempted to exit the conference room via the North Korean door, the soldier would certainly prevent me from doing so. This was explained to me in the briefing room. It was also explained that we should not walk directly between the soldier and the conference table, as this would obstruct his ability to do his job. One of the Japanese tourists forgot this, and when she moved in front of the soldier his arm moved rapidly down to obstruct her, and the Japanese speaking tour guide launched into a tirade of Japanese aimed at the tourist.

However, one gets a sense that there is a lot of ritual involved even here. When armies are stationed in places where they are at peace for years or decades, the role of ritual grows. The threat of a war is of course extremely real in Korea, and huge armies are poised for action at a moment’s notice. But none the less when you take a photograph the ritual seems to dominate. Perhaps it does so to hide how terrifying the situation actually is. North Korea is truly unpredictable. One really does not know what the North Koreans might do at any moment. So one keeps doing what one has done for the last 50 years. The DMZ is not ultimately going the way of Buckingham Palace. At some point, peacefully or not, the stalemate in Korea will end, and there will no longer be any soldiers standing stationary in conference rooms. One cannot imagine that anybody will want to celebrate the history of the DMZ by maintaining the rituals. But for now the ritual seems old and fixed.

The other peculiar instruction we were given in the briefing room was that we were not to look behind us into North Korea under any circumstances when leaving the conference room. Apparently our photographs would be taken by North Koreans and these could be used for propaganda purposes if we did this. Or perhaps we would turn into pillars of salt, I really do not know. I am not sure they said exactly why. In any event, the threat of another tirade of Japanese was enough to prevent me from doing it. Once we had walked away from the conference room, we were taken through the large ornate building on the South Korean side to a viewing platform, where we were permitted to look at the north and take photographs.

Large ornate buildings face the spartan huts containing the conference rooms from each side. I do not think they have any real function other than to look impressive. Watch towers sit along both sides of the demarcation line, white for North Korea and blue for the South Korean side – presumably indicating a UN operation. The guide told us that the nearby North Korean watch tower would certainly contain soldiers taking our photographs.

Behind us (the JSA is on a tongue of land sticking into North Korea, and is surrounded by North Korea on three sides) it was possible to see Gijeong-dong, the so called ‘Propaganda Village’, the North Korean village in which nobody apparently lives (lights come on in some of the buildings – but at the same time every day), but which does contain the world’s largest flagpole, which holds a very large flag that needs to be taken down very quickly when it rains, as when wet it is likely to become heavy enough to cause the flagpole to collapse.

Thankfully, the village no longer broadcasts North Korean propaganda through enormous speakers, although it did for quite a few years. The world’s second largest flagpole (the South Koreans eventually conceded to the North after a period of competitive flagpole building in the 1980s) is situated in Daeseong-dong, the so called ‘Freedom Village’ (these names are given by the South Koreans, obviously) in the southern part of the DMZ, just south of the JSA. In various places one can see white marker posts separated from each other by a few metres, that denote the demarcation lines.

There were two final things to see in the JSA. For these we were not allowed to leave the tour bus. Firstly, the memorial to Captain Arthur Bonifas, after who the UN camp is now named, It was formally Camp Kitty Hawk, but was renamed after the murder of Captain Bonifas by the North Koreans.

In 1976 Bonifas and a group of five American and South Korean Soldiers attempted to chop down a tree in the JSA which was obstructing the view of the Bridge of No Return into North Korea. Northern Korean soldiers demanded that they stop, and when the Americans and South Koreans refused to do so, the party was rushed by North Korean soldiers, and after a skirmish Captain Bonifas and Lt. Mark Barrett were murdered by their own axes. This incident led to the ending of the situation where both North and South Koreans were able to move freely in the JSA, and is the most serious incident to have occurred in the JSA (US and South Korean soldiers completed chopping down the tree a few days later in ‘Operation Paul Bunyan’).

The memorial is actually just visible in the bottom left of the above picture. The bulk of the picture shows the Bridge of No Return, which was the final stop of the tour in the DMZ. This has been used for prisoner exchange at the end of the Korean War and at various times since. The name emphasizes the fact that at the end of the war, prisoners were given the option of returning home or remaining with their captors, and made the decision by choosing whether or not to cross the bridge, and any such decision was final. If you crossed it into North Korea, there would be no option of coming back. I suspect that if I had somehow managed to leave the tour party and crossed it I would not have been allowed to return either. However, I was not given the option of going any where near it. The tour guide explained that this was by far the most dangerous place on the tour, and that this explained why we were not permitted to leave the bus.

This was more or less the end of the tour. However, it is one of the inviolable laws of the universe that all bus tours include at least one trip to a gift shop, local craft shop, etc, at which tourists are encouraged to buy souvenirs, and the tour company generally paid a commission on anything sold in the shop. As I then discovered, this even applies on tours of the Demilitarized Zone between North and South Korea. That’s right, the demilitarized zone has a gift shop. Really.

Well, almost. The gift shop is actually outside the DMZ, inside Camp Bonifas on the southern side (I have no idea if there is a gift shop on the North Korean side where one can buy fetching portraits of the Dear Leader. Probably). But the souvenirs mostly commemorate the DMZ itself. I looked around. Korean staff wearing fetching leather jackets with a ‘JSA’ insignia attempted to sell us stuff. There were all the usual things one can buy in gift shops. Coffee cups. T-shirts and sweat shirts. Tea towels. Jigsaws. Baseball caps. All fairly mundane, despite the oddness of the place being commemorated. I don’t normally buy these sorts of things, but somehow the DMZ gift shop was special. I looked for the oddest possible souvenir to buy

And in the glass case that made up one of the counters was the perfectly bizarre souvenir.

Yes, it is a set of DMZ souvenir shot glasses. I particularly like the barbed wire. Of course, I had to have them. In any event, the set only cost me about $5. And I think they now have clearly taken first place in the list of the strangest of my few earthly possessions.

Everybody I have shown my set of DMZ souvenir shot glasses to has wanted a set for themselves. I should have bought about ten, and I would have a year’s worth of birthday presents. They are the perfect glasses to fill with strange distilled rice spirits and raise to liberty and freedom.

But that was it. As we drove back into and through South Korea, the English speaking guide had an informal chat with us, asking why we were in Korea and suggesting things that we might do in Seoul. We asked her about the South Korean attitude to possible reunification, and she told us that South Koreans generally did not want it. “Germany tried it, and they almost sent themselves bankrupt. We do not want that, although obviously we would prefer to have a normal, peaceful country to our north”.

Personally, I am not sure that is the right interpretation of the German situation. Certainly, the implementation of German reunification has been disastrous, but I do not believe that this is a problem with reunification per se, as much as the way in which the Germans actually went about it. The advantage that East Germany should have had post-reunification was a cheaper and more flexible labour market than the west, although with lower productivity. By forcing western wages and the western welfare system on the east (and by spending lots of public money on infrastructure, which generally flowed back west because that was where the expertise to built it lay), the Germans created a system that looked generous in the short term (and which was horribly expensive for the west) but which in the long term only led to high unemployment and a business environment that no sane private sector company would choose to invest in. There is no reason whatsoever why Korean reunification would have to make the same mistakes. It would be a shame if the reaction to German mistakes was to swing so far in the opposite direction that entirely different mistakes were made.

However, this lies in the future. The fall of North Korea does not look imminent. That said, these things do tend to happen at unexpected moments. It will happen sometime. The question is simply when. More importantly, the question is how. It does not need to be said that another war on the Korean peninsular would likely be catastrophic.

But for my tour, that was it. After a quick stop for lunch, it was back to Seoul and normality, looking for a nice restaurant in which to eat dinner.