My visit today to one of the world’s most militarized zones included a Disneyland-like ride down into the earth, a luncheon in a touristy restaurant with a view of miles of barbed wire fencing and a soundtrack featuring Janet Jackson singing Nasty, and a little Korean boy whose aunties thought nothing of letting him bring — and incessantly use — a toy space gun that made loud machine gun sounds as we drove through checkpoint after checkpoint of armed guards.
The demilitarized zone (DMZ) separating North and South Korea is both a chilling reminder of the region’s tensions and a somewhat chintzy tourist attraction.
An hour bus ride north of Seoul, the 4km-wide DMZ stretches 248km across the Korean peninsula, sealed off for the most part from human occupation. The exceptions are three villages — one populated by a handful of South Koreans, another an empty “propaganda village” run by the north that claims the world’s largest flag and flagpole, and the third the “truce village” of Panmunjeom, where meetings and discussions take place between the estranged halves of Korea.
The half-day tour started with a visit to one of the four known tunnels secretly dug by the North under the DMZ and into South Korean territory. Though the North somehow maintains with a straight face that the tunnels were actually built by the South, they were obviously meant to facilitate the movement of troops in the event of an invasion of the South. After being discovered by the South, the tunnels were sealed at the line which divides the two countries — and one was subsequently turned into a tourist attraction.
The slow ride down to the tunnel in an open-topped tram was the only time I’ve ever been asked to wear a helmet when it’s been necessary rather than just a precaution. Sitting three abreast, the riders on the outside have to tilt their heads inwards to keep from hitting the sloped walls of the 300 meter descent route. The tunnel itself is barely six feet tall, and just about as wide. The tour ends at the first of three barriers erected by the South after the tunnel’s discovery.
The English-speaking guide was excellent — very personable and inadvertently entertaining. She kept making her point by asking rhetorical questions that sounded more like interrogations. “Do you want Korea to be reunified?” “Do you want to defect to the North?” “Do you want to sell your photos to the North?” Um, no, no and no.
The rest of the tour included stops at an overlook where you could gaze down at the DMZ and across to North Korea, and at a train station in the middle of nowhere that’s part of the almost-complete reunification rail line that will link South Korea to the rest of Asia through North Korea. If all goes well, it will be dedicated this July. It was a bit bizarre to see the ticket gate with a sign indicating a non-existant train heading to Pyongyang, guarded by South Korean military personnel who were more than happy to help with photo opportunities.