Devoid of beauty but rich in symbolism, Korea's demilitarized zone is the kind of anomaly that draws spectators -- like the imprint of what was the World Trade Center. Unless you have a personal connection, there's no reason to see it more than once. But I keep returning. The barbed wire and mine fields are now only a backdrop, my attention is on the soldiers, the tourists, the guides, and the locals, more specifically the changing dynamic of these people and their surroundings.
Shortly after arriving in Korea in 1991, I talked a mystified but obliging student into helping me travel as far north as we could on public transportation. Along the way, I learned that while I could join a tour and go all the way to Panmunjom, the truce village right on the heavily fortified border, she and all Koreans would need special permission to get beyond the many road blocks that pop up the closer one gets to the border. We never got close enough to see the peak of a North Korean mountain, let alone the border or actual North Koreans.
After four subsequent trips to the DMZ, I know the signs revealing just how tense cross-border relations are: Does the organizer refuse blue jean-clad participants? Do the guards stand at attention and refrain from smiling during presentations? Do you have more than one machine gun-wielding soldier enter the bus and look for anyone suspicious? The more Yes answers, the tenser the situation. Happily, I came back from my most recent trip with three Nos.
On April 18, I traveled around Yeoncheon and Cheorwon with other members of the Korean Overseas Information Service on a government-sponsored trip. The message of the past and present threat from North Korea was as clear as ever in presentations at the No 2 Infiltration Tunnel, Sangseung Outpost and along the route taken by North Korean agents sent to assassinate then-President Park Chung Hee in 1966. But what was equally clear was how this most dangerous slice of Korea is ready to move on.
Everywhere in fairly equal amounts are signs that the area is prepared for war but betting on peace and prosperity: tanks sit beneath camouflaged bunkers, convoys of soldiers move between bases, and at the same time, there are many new businesses and homes and backhoes digging sites for more. Mountainsides are scarred with either trenches and pill boxed machine gun nests or ornate new ancestral tombs, the latter a sure sign that developers have compensated a family for the land where the old grave stood or people in the region are now able to splurge more.
But the best part of the trip was the attitude of the Koreans. During presentations about past infiltrations or the Korean War battle of Baekma (White Horse) Hill where over a ten-day period in 1952 around 17,500 soldiers died, they listened and bowed respectfully but later they teased each other in ways that even caused the military guide to grin broadly.
Ironically, for some of these tourists their first DMZ experience came on the other side. Some had already visited the inter-Korean mountain resort on North Korea's Geumgang. “The Geumgangsan tour focused on relaxing scenery, but this tour has stressed the division of Korea and the need to remember past fighting,” said one participant, a young woman in her early 30s. “Tourists could relax and get comfortable in Geumgangsan. It was like North Koreans were our neighbors; just Koreans not North Koreans.”
“The North Koreans in Geumgang speak Korean and eat kimchi, and even laugh loudly when South Koreans make jokes. Maybe since it looked like South Korea, people felt comfortable,” she added. “The security trip reminds us that there is still the possibility of war and North Korea still plans to invade the South. … Anyway it's an undeniable fact that now Korea is actually not one nation yet. I found this deplorable on both the Geumgangsan and the security tours.”
Korean thoughts on the DMZ are still as intense as those of Americans gazing down on ground zero in Manhattan. In 1998, I went to the DMZ with classmates from Hanguk University of Foreign Studies' Graduate School of International Studies.
Some of the officials showing us around mentioned that they had access to North Korean TV and treated us to a short video of some of their favorite scenes. One was North Korean leader Kim Jong-il visiting a women's battalion. As his car approached the women waiting in the stands started shaking and crying, like teenage groupies about to meet the star of their fan club.
All the foreigners, including myself, bent over laughing, but my Korean classmates stood stone faced. Later I asked why they didn't laugh. “We understand them,” one said. “If we were there, we would be doing the same. We'd honestly believe he was great or fear the consequences for our families if we didn't feign joy.”
By David Kendall
Korea.net staff writer
