Staring Down the Enemy

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From the first day we knew we were coming to South Korea, there’s always been that lingering voice in our ears whispering, ‘North Korea.’ From this computer in Yeoju, to the most dangerous and heavily guarded border on the planet, is a distance of approximately 70 miles. Yes, there is technically a war still being fought one hour’s drive north of Seoul. At times, that thought can be a bit eerie, yet most of the time, it’s just business as usual around here.

Despite all of the news lately that has been full of reports pertaining to, missile or satellite… missile or satellite? Is the border open/ closed/ open again? Will Japan shoot the thing down or will it get far enough that the U.S has to? When is it getting launched? …despite all that, and the unnerving-ness of it all, Cass and I decided to… you guessed it, head to the DMZ. (We’re young and dumb, right?) The demilitarized zone is the two and a half mile wide strip of land that cuts the peninsula in half roughly at the 38th parallel, settled as a part of the Korean War Armistance (I could Wikipedia that for more info, but it’s basically a loose cease fire).

Before everyone reading this starts wondering what in the world we’re doing, I would like to share with you an email I got directly from the U.S. embassy in Seoul. It should curb some concerns, I hope.



The U.S. Embassy in Seoul is transmitting the following information through the Embassy's warden system as a public service to all U.S. citizens in the Republic of Korea. Please disseminate this message to U.S. citizens in your organizations or to other Americans you know.

North Korea has announced that it will attempt a rocket launch between 11:00 a.m. and 4:00 p.m. on one of the days during April 4-8, 2009, from a site in northeast North Korea. This possible event has received much media attention. At this time, the U.S. Embassy in Seoul sees no potential danger to American citizens in South Korea as a result of the possible launch and does not believe that any special actions are warranted by American citizens other than to pay close attention to local news reports during this time period.

The Embassy is monitoring the situation very closely. We will apprise the American citizen community of any important information via this email system and the Embassy websites at http://seoul.usembassy.gov and www.asktheconsul.org.



Ladies and Gentlemen, without further adieu… I give you North Korea.

Well, in a sense. We never really stepped foot on NK soil, but we got as close as a normal Joe-Shmoe citizen can get. If you count our time underground, we were actually 170 meters away from the true border. We signed up for a tour, the only way to get to the DMZ of late, a few weeks ago, before the news of the actual rocket/satellite was at the level it is today. The tour would take a full day taking us to four different stops.

Approaching the DMZ gave us a tense feeling even before we got off the bus. We began in the bustling megalopolis of Seoul, the cultural center of the Korean universe. The more we drove north, the more we started noticing an increased amount of barbed and razer wire lining the roads and rivers. Watchtowers started popping up along the banks of the rivers within a half hour’s drive of the city. We were heading into uncomfortable territory.

We were required to register at a place called, “The Freedom Bridge,” our first stop. This is a symbolic place because it is the bridge S. Korean POW’s and N. Korean refugees walked across during their return south after the Korean War.

This is the place where we first got a taste of the rift the DMZ creates in the Korean people’s lives. We really weren’t prepared for this and it plucked an emotion when we first saw the memorials. Every Chusok (the Korean version of Thanksgiving) families flock to this point with gifts and offerings. Parallel examples of this happened during the American civil war, but the DMZ not only divided the Korean Peninsula in half, for over fifty years, it also divided Korean families in half. Out of a need for it, a large marble memorial has been built to symbolize the unification of families, with plenty of room for offerings. What was more striking was the makeshift memorial found at the end of the bridge. Hanging on the chain linked fence were flags, personal notes and letters to people in the North, pictures faded from the sun, t-shirts with markered messages to families, messages of hope from different organizations. It is an all too real reminder of the ongoing tragedy.

The ride from here to our next destination was an experience itself. We stopped at a military checkpoint at the start of a long bridge. Fully armed guards emerged from the camouflaged station and inspected the inside and outside of the bus, including the passengers, before we were waved on. These guys made angry U.S. customs agents look like Little Red Riding Hood. Pictures were strictly restricted from here on. The bridge was full of barriers, eerily yellow in contrast with the grey concrete, that we had to swerve around every twenty feet or so. The dense razor wire lining the edges of the bridge interrupted the views of the river below. We were the only vehicle on the entire span of the bridge and the feeling of vulnerability was palpable. This was true DMZ.

After lunch, we went to the third infiltration tunnel. This tunnel, the third discovered, but the most dangerous known tunnel, was discovered in 1978. It is about five feet tall and five feet wide, runs about two hundred feet below ground, and tunnels over a mile in length under the DMZ and border. This is the closest discovered tunnel to Seoul, 30 miles, and designed to move over 30,000 soldiers to within one hour of the city. The north downplays the tunnels, thought to have over twenty more, as part of a coal mining operation. They have even gone as far as painting the walls black.

Before heading down into the tunnel, we watched a short video and visited a small museum on the grounds. This was particularly emotional, as they had footage taken in 2000- 2001 of some families reuniting during the short time the two countries were on good terms. Images of people weeping and mobbing each other with hugs filled the screen. With the tensions rising nowadays, it quickly became apparent that the video was created at a time when things on the peninsula were well. The positive connotations of the film were about the farthest from the current reality, but a message that so many hope will return soon.

We donned our hard hats and headed down into the depths. It was quite the undertaking, and an example of what war can make people do. We walked, crouched over- walked, to within 170 meters of the actual border while underground. The tunnel is cut off with three creepy steel barriers at that point. The walk out gets a bit exhausting, but we chose the ramp into the ground rather than the amusement park-like cart you can take down.

True to Asian tour group methodology, we shuffled back onto the bus and were off to the Dora Observatory.

This was a building on top of a mountain, apparently the closest part of South Korea to the north. This was our chance to see what all the reports are about. We finally were going to see the most reclusive, protected, controlled, oppressed, etc., etc., place on the globe. I was expecting to see some kind of mindblowing scene unfolding; like a moonscape on the otherside of the fence. Yet as I stepped onto the platform, beyond the fences, the politics, the theology, and the armed watchtowers, there was just simply a city and some scattered buildings in the countryside.

From the viewing platform, we could see quite a stretch of North Korea. It was a fairly good air day, so we grabbed some binoculars and saw the city of Kaesong (N.K.’s 7th largest city), the propaganda village (literally a shell of a city to give the impression of prosperity in N.K.), and the two monsterously tall flag poles of each country (N.K.’s being the tallest in the world). We could take some pictures under strict regulation, in a designated area behind the binoculars and only behind the yellow line. Thinking about it afterward, I guess putting a long black device up to one of your eyes and pointing directly at someone with orders to shoot anything suspicious might cause a problem. Despite that, I got a grainy, blurry, zoomed in picture of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, North Korea… my little way of staring down the enemy.

Our last stop was at the Dorasan train station. This is an interesting situation, and most likely the most expensive symbol of something that doesn’t exist in the world. It is a brand new, fully operational, international train station that ghostly sits empty. It was built at a time of hope in unification, as a functional and symbolic gesture towards the north as the first station out of South Korea. There, we got a passport stamps, bought “tickets” heading north, and basked in the hope of a united Korea.

Beautifully symbolic artwork of shadows reaching for each other and clasped hands decorate the walls, while pictures of G.W. Bush signing a railroad tie with the S. Korean president are displayed. Trains occasionally do come here, though; there is a DMZ rice farm and a shared small industrial complex, together with the camera wielding foreign tours arriving, the station doesn’t sit completely empty. In fact it sits there waiting… just waiting.

On the bus home, Cass and I shared a sense of heartbreak for the people of the Koreas. Those feelings far overpowered any sense of accomplishment we had seeing a country only a relative few get to see. It is truly a tragedy that families should be separated because of different viewpoints and politics. It seems the one thing that should remain higher, untouched by this, is the love families share, a much respected and practiced custom here.

My Korean friends explain that they don’t want to be separate, that no matter north or south/ east or west, what matters are the Korean people and families. The division is between people in power, not what the people want. The hope of unification is strong; signs on the track reading, ‘The trains want to run,’ the multi million dollar train station just waiting for the day, the personal messages left on the Freedom Bridge. All one can do is hope good will conquer in the end… and hope it will happen sooner rather than later.

In the meantime, we will keep the Korean people in our thoughts and our eyes on this launch…

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Comments

[Dorn]

Wow
Wow, that sounds like an incredible trip.