To the Front Lines at the DMZ

(Left: From left to right, Sumi, Oliver, Stephanie, Sarah, Ashley, Daniel, Jennifer and Chris, and David)
(Right: Sculpture symbolizing the splitting of the world, and Korea, between Democrat and Communist, and the effort to find unity again)

Hi all,

Jennifer and I, along with fellow teachers Oliver, Stephanie, Dave, Daniel, Sarah, Ashley, and Sumi, just got back from a trip out to the Demilitarized Zone (the DMZ) between the two Koreas. Located about an hour-and-a-half away from Seoul, due North, the DMZ is apparently the most heavily-mined section of the Earth's surface. Established in 1953 after the end of the Korean War, the DMZ exists to provide breathing room and space between the two former combatants.

Technically, and frighteningly, they're still technically current combatants, as the war has never officially ended, and the two countries continue to snipe at each other occasionally, both verbally and physically.

(The entrance to Paju city, the last place we were allowed to take pictures aboard the bus from)

(The wall at the South Korean end of Freedom Bridge, blocked up since it leads directly into North Korea)

We boarded a bus in Seoul at the Express Terminal, and travelled up to the edge of the DMZ at Paju City. There, we took a quick stretch with our tourmates while our guide processed our passports with the military authorities, and we puttered around the Freedom Bridge, and the Paju ginseng festival. The former was the site of the last POW transfer at the end of the Korean War, while the latter contained a whole bunch of Korean food, ginseng, and festivity.

(A photo of a photo of the 3rd Tunnel, since we're not actually allowed to take pictures inside the Tunnel itself)

Contrasting this, of course, is the DMZ itself. We arrived at the Third Tunnel tourist area, the site where the third of four known infiltration tunnels built by the North Koreans was discovered. These tunnels were designed to sneak a Northern army past the DMZ and thus past the South's observation forces, and to get the Northern army as close to Seoul as possible.

Thankfully, all four were discovered long before they could threaten Seoul itself, although the South suspects that as many as twenty more may have been built but abandoned. The North, of course, protested that these were in fact built by the South, but the direction of the tunnel, the blast marks, and everything else suggest otherwise. What's really weird, though, and indeed, almost surreal, about the DMZ, is the utter lack of people.

Jen and I have both gotten used to seeing hundreds of people everywhere we go. Such is a fact of life in a country of some 50-odd million people packed into, effectively, an area the size of Southern Ontario. Suwon is, in itself, 1 million people, while Seoul is positively cramped with 10 million people.

But the DMZ, due largely to the mines, the tension with the North, and the heavy military presence, is quiet save for the sounds of insects, birds, and animals. Ironically, the war and the human cost it created resulted in a pristine natural environment, where several endangered species are able to exist outside of human intervention. Given that they've got about 4 kilometres on average, it's not surprising that one of the questions any government seeking to re-unify the peninsula will have to face will not just be how to re-integrate the landscape and clear the mines, but how to ensure the native species don't get overrun by human development.
The area is almost dead quiet, a fact that is almost unsettling. Even in small towns like Timmins, where Jen is from, or smaller burgs such as those surrounding the Kitchener-Waterloo area where we lived before Korea, one is used to signs of human habitation: roads, cars, lights in the distance, all are present, even if in a modest form.

While there are roads in the DMZ, no one uses them. While there are buildings, the only people present are military and minesweepers, and a handful of tiny villages that provide food and farming space. I remember reading about life on an isolated kibbutz in Israel, or in the settlements in the West Bank--even these, I suspect, are not this *desolate*.

We sat down to watch an absolutely stunning piece of propaganda put together by the tourism department. A white-robed young Korean child sobbing while eating a tiny handful of rice, stock war footage from the conflict, and an oddball blurb about how the DMZ has become a symbol, not of war and devastation, but humanity's ability to live together with nature, all featured in this oddity of a film. I've seen some old 1930s and 1940s WWII and Cold War propaganda pieces, but this was bizarre. The English narrator even had trouble dealing with some of the weird word choices necessitated by the translation from Korean.

Speaking of which, a brief aside: the Korean government has, apparently, been worried about tourism lately, which is a fraction of what other Asian countries like Thailand, Japan, and Vietam receive. One of the reasons for this dearth is the DMZ and the ongoing conflict itself--while muted to Cold War levels, it's still a war, and the tension one feels at the DMZ is stunning compared to the rest of the country. The other reason, however, is some really awful signage in English. One might defend such poor translations on street signs: dialect, lack of funding, and the fact that most signs don't *need* to be in English mean that one might not expect a perfect translation on every road. But on a major tourist spot? This was true even in Gyeongju, and it's hard to get over the fact that Korea, which is capable of speaking English, hiring English writers or editors, or at the very least gettng a fluent English speaker to do the same, might avoid such problems. Simply put, it is hard to relax and be a tourist when you're mentally cringing at the grammar or the lack of articles like "the," "a," or "an." Or the overabundance of "the them."

I digress.

We then ventured down into the tunnel itself, about 300 metres down--the walk back up reminded me distinctly of Bulguksa, I might add--and took a look at the last of three consecutive blockades built by the Southern army to prevent the tunnel from being used. One hopes they might have collapsed the rest of the tunnel leading up to the Southern end of the DMZ, but it was definitely spooky to stare off into the darkness of the tunnel beyond the steel barricade and barbed wire.

(The Dora Observation Post, UN and South Korean Command)

From there, we set out to Dora Observatory, on top of one of the mountains overlooking the DMZ proper. Unfortunately, the view was marred by the fog on this particular day--we joke the fog was somehow deliberately set up by the North Koreans to keep the capitalists from seeing their "utopia"--but we managed to score a neat view of the fence guarding the Southern end of the Zone, and I caught a glimpse of a soldier on the Northern equivalent post on the other side.

We weren't allowed to take many photos, unfortunately, but we bundled back into the bus for a trip to Dorasan Train Station, the "First Stop to the North" on a recently-constructed railway line between the two countries. Again, what was surreal was that, aside from we meagre tourists, there wasn't anyone else there. A train pulled up while we were wandering about the station (getting our passport stamped, too, I might add), *but there was absolutely nobody on the bloody thing.*

(Dorasan Train Station, with about as many people there as it ever gets)

For those of us now used to the vast number of people in this country, this was downright unsettling. The only other living beings around were some soldiers, hundreds of bugs, and a few flights of geese.

This brings me to the political commentary: it's really weird to see the way the DMZ and the divorce between North and South Korea have affected both countries in turn. South Korea was for a couple of decades under the grip of a right-wing dictatorship, bordering on what some might call fascist or at the very least a highly-nationalist regime.

Since the overthrow of the old regime, however, South Korea has been unabashedly capitalist, developing a culture that reminds me at times of what I've read about Western capitalism before the labour movement forced managers and owners to actually put in labour regulations to protect their employees. 40 hours a week, which we "supposedly" are doing, turns into far more on occasion, while our Korean coworkers and Korean labourers in general work far more hours than what would be considered legal or even, sometimes, sane, by a Canadian standard.

The DMZ itself is a tourist zone, meanwhile, for the South. Granted, a heavily-patrolled, military-operated tourist zone, but still, the world's largest minefield is regularly visited by polaroid-armed visitors from around the world. It even has cute big-headed cartoonish images on t-shirts of North and South Korean guards smiling out at the viewer, and pins to the same effect. Witness the picture of me below (pardon the goofy gesture from yours truly).

(Chris and a stylized South Korean guard. Much more friendly-looking than the real ones)

The North, meanwhile, has gone the completely opposite direction towards Stalinism and isolation. In most of the rest of the world, the form of personality cult that Kim Jong-il and his father, Kim Il-Sung, have created around themselves no longer exists. Stalin's Russia is, thankfully, gone, while China is cautiously embracing capitalism--even if the Party cadre of the Chinese Communists continues to hold on to power politically-- and Cuba was, frankly, a different entity altogether even from the beginning compared to other "really-existing Communist" countries. Communism has often been associated with the kind of political oppression seen now primarily in China and in North Korea, but the sheer isolationism and repression of the North is arguably different from anywhere else in the world.

Why did this kind of Stalinism survive here? Was it the support of Stalin himself for the Korean communists during the War? The presence of China, the similar persuasive and political imagery of Mao Zedong? Or the isolation North Korea found itself in when the South closed the border at the DMZ? I don't know, and unfortunately, I don't know if anyone else does either.

The divergence between the two Koreas presents a serious problem, however, for reunification. Nevermind the differing ideologies, which are impediment enough, or the conservatism of both sides militarily and politically: there's a significant gap that's formed in terms of culture and a negative view from both sides of the other. Fifty-plus years of propaganda political repression in the North, and strangely similar if democratic disdain from the South, make it hard to see how the two cultures could reunite. The economic issues of how to reintegrate either side into the other's framework present similar challenges. And the ability of the South to reintegrate the North after the aforementioned fifty-someodd years of isolation and propaganda, make one worry if a situation similar to if worse than the reunification of Germany might result.

How can any culture or country, no matter how advanced or determined, overcome such a gap? And further, do either really want it anymore? Both sides claim a desire to reintegrate, but the question of which side being integrating into which, and how to overcome the challenges above, make the prospect daunting at the very least. Unfortunately, such problems will likely only get worse the longer the two sides stay divided, but in the absence of a clear plan for integration, or political will to do so, the chances of it happening any time soon seem slim at best.

A fascinating trip, and one I'd repeat, if only to see other parts of the DMZ, but certainly an unsettling one.

Best regards,

Chris

PS: For fun, below:

(And off we go!)