Today, we had our first group tourism activity, and it was a significant one because we toured the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ). The DMZ runs along the border between North and South Korea along the 38th parallel, and it was established in 1953 at the conclusion of the Korean War. The DMZ is jointly managed by Korea and the United Nations, and while it is an area tourists can visit, it is still a very serious, active military border. In many areas, photography was forbidden, especially in areas facing North Korea, but I’ll share some photos from approved areas.
After breakfast we got on a charter bus and met our tour guide Diane, and she was fantastic. On the bus ride to the DMZ (which took about an hour), she gave us a detailed presentation on the Korean War and the Japanese Colonization period (1910-1945) that concluded during WWII. I know many know the details so I won’t type a long history report in the blog, but here is a brief rundown of what Diane explained to us that I found important. Japan occupied and subjugated the Korean people beginning in 1910, and when WWII began, many Koreans were forced to serve Japan in the war, and not even women were spared, being forced to serve as “comfort women” to Japanese soldiers and endure repeated sexual assaults or face death. While Japan occupied Korea, they also devastated its natural resources, so when Korea was liberated, its economy and government struggled to rebuild due to Japan’s devastation of their resources. However, the location of the Korean peninsula with its convenient sea ports and proximity to East Asian nations made it a valuable strategic location, and as one of the first fronts of the Cold War, the USSR fought the USA and other western powers to determine what ideology Korea would have and what superpowers Korea would align with. Ultimately, a ceasefire was reached, and the nation was split into a northern and southern half along the 38th parallel, with the USSR backing the northern half and the USA backing the southern half.
The DMZ is the border of the longest continuous ceasefire in the world, and our first stop was Imjingak Peace Park, which was built in 1972 out of hope for reunification someday. Many families were separated by the ceasefire line, and today, many Koreans have lost track of relatives who remained in the North Korean side. Our tour guide told us that when she was growing up, there was a one-time television program in 1983 designed to let separated families contact each other by sending messages on the air. It was originally planned to last one day, but the amount of requests made it last for over 138 days. Even with this length, some requests were denied, including our guide Diane’s own grandmother’s to try to locate her younger sister. Her younger sister was eventually found in a different part of South Korea, but she didn’t find the family until Diane’s grandmother had passed. There are several monuments to reunification at the site, but one of the most chilling things was a chain link fence with tons of ribbons loosely tied to it. The ribbons have messages to loved ones in North Korea, and they are hung there in the hope that divine providence may allow the wind to blow the messages across the border and be found by their loved ones.
After we left the Peace Park, we headed to the Dora Observatory. The observatory is situated at the northernmost point of the demarcation line (the actual border of the DMZ), and before we entered, Korean military had to board our bus and check our passports with their list of who was supposed to be on the tour before we entered. While I couldn’t take any photos, the Dora Observatory was one of the most chilling experiences of my lifetime. After growing up hearing about North Korea as one of our most dangerous enemies and fearing they would someday attack the United States with nuclear weapons, I was able to sit in an observatory and see the southernmost edge of the nation with my own eyes. The kingdom of secrecy and deception was appropriately shrouded in a dense fog, but in the distance, we could see a high flag pole with the North Korean flag and a few buildings around it. While North Korea maintains that this is a working farm community, South Korean intelligence has identified this as a “propaganda town” with fake buildings, complete with pointless city lights and even staged street sweepings to confuse casual observers. The propaganda town is called Kijong-dong, and it was constructed in the 1950s in an attempt to sway Korean farmers along the border to defect to the North. The South Korean economy lagged behind the North’s after their establishment so the propaganda worked, but by the end of the 1960s, the South Korean economy and quality of living had roared past that of the North, and of course, the North was hiding egregious human rights violations as well. The flagpole itself is even part of the propaganda machine, as it was the highest flagpole in the world until 2010.
Looking across the border towards North Korea, I was struck by how serene and similar the landscapes on either side looked. Cultivated farmland lies on both sides with misty mountains in the distance, and a river slowly ebbs and flows across a valley that could easily be confused for a national park instead of one of the most pressure-filled military borders on the face of the earth. I couldn’t shake the notion that I was staring at a remaining battle of the Cold War, with a wall not yet torn down unlike Berlin and a people not yet liberated. When the Berlin Wall fell, Leonard Bernstein conducted Beethoven’s 9th Symphony at the wall, and the opening word the soloist and choir spoke was changed to “Freiheit (which means freedom).” In the current situation, it’s hard to imagine a reunification being possible, but I hope and pray it will someday, and when it does, may the celebration of freedom and peace be just as meaningful as it was in Berlin in 1989.
After leaving the observatory, we saw one of the most chilling sites imaginable called the “Third Tunnel of Aggression.” South Korea has located four tunnels dug under the DMZ by the North, and this tunnel was discovered in 1978 after a defector warned that there was another tunnel. The tunnels were believed to be groundwork for an invasion of South Korea, but the North claims they were coal mining tunnels. Today, you can descend into the third tunnel, and we did, even donning yellow hard hats in case of falling debris. After a long ramp down to access the tunnel, we traveled through a small crawlspace to the end of the border underground (I had to duck the entire time). At the end of the tunnel, you can see the North Korean side in the distance past stone walls, and along the walls of the tunnel, yellow on the rock-face is residue from dynamite that was used to dig the tunnels.
Before we headed back to Seoul, we had one final stop at a souvenir shop near a Korean village in the DMZ called Daeseong-dong. It is a small farming town in the DMZ that houses Korean residents despite being in an area controlled by the United Nations, and it is the only civilian habitation in the DMZ. I cannot stress the pristine beauty of the farmland in the DMZ enough, and Daeseong-dong sells several agricultural products including rice and soybeans. The souvenir shop plaza we stopped at has a soybean ice cream, and it was delicious (I opted for potato chips but sampled my fiancée Amelia’s ice cream). Photos were also allowed and encouraged here, so I’ve included a couple of Amelia and I below of the area around the souvenir shop and the ice cream.
Once we returned to Seoul, I rested for a few minutes before having dinner at a fantastic Korean restaurant where I had cutlassfish, seaweed soup, pumpkin, and various other sides (I was starving so I neglected to take photos)! After dinner, a large group of us headed to tour a palace at the suggestion of one of our Korean graduate students named Dongcheol Kim. The Changgyeonggung Palce was built in the mid-15th century, and despite being damaged and destroyed by the Japanese during multiple occupation attempts over the centuries, it has been renovated and today stands as a beautiful area of historic ruins and natural beauty. We walked around the palace grounds until nightfall and then came back to the hotel. I was exhausted and had a lot of writing to do for the day, but I fell asleep before waking up this morning (June 8th) to complete the blog. Thank you for reading!
