Travels in the Demilitarized Zone, 2

Note: This is a longer entry than usual, because visiting the DMZ is a pretty intense experience. I've split it into three pages. Links leading to the next page are at the bottom of each page. This is page 2.

To get to the DMZ, we got on a bus at one of the hoity-toity hotels in Seoul. After about half an hour or forty-five minutes of driving, we entered the No Picture Taking Zone, a sort of DMZ Lite, where military control and restrictions on movement begin to form part of everyday life.

The area around the DMZ is beautiful. It must be said that, while the division is a tragedy for humans, it's been a blessing to the flora and fauna of the region. It's 64 million square feet of essentially untouched ground, where birds and animals rarely see humans and never encounter hunters. The special DMZ exhibit at the War Memorial in Seoul emphasized this aspect of the division, and I've heard several mentions of plans to turn the area into a wildlife preserve should the two Koreas be united. However, the fact that both sides have mined their border areas extensively adds a tense undercurrent to any enjoyment of the wilderness.

The forests of the DMZ. Just to the left of center, atop the small, earthy rise, is a rusted sign that marks the location of the Military Demarcation Line, as the border is called.

A little while later, we passed the control point, where our passport and our clothing were checked. Yes, our clothing. As my guidebook and the tour operator insisted, it is essential that you look nice for this tour. Shirts with collars only, no shorts or miniskirts, no spandex, no sandals, no tank tops, no dirt - the list goes on, and it wasn't clear to me initially whether the intent was for us to look nice, or whether it was merely to assure that we weren't going to be going dressed as wanton trollops. However, once on the tour, it became apparent pretty quickly why the dress code was in place.

And why is that? Because we, the visitors to the DMZ, are propaganda for South Korea, and presumably, for capitalism and market democracy more generally.

That's me, with the collared shirt, binoculars, and UN visitor ID card. I couldn't bring myself to smile.

Our guide asked us to look happy and to smile if and when we saw North Koreans. We want to make sure they know we're happy over here, he said. Regardless of my own discomfort at being used for propaganda, the heaviness of the place and its history made a cheerful smile seem wrong and out of place.

We were also instructed not to point or make any gestures toward North Korean guards or tourists, as they might take pictures of us and use them for propaganda purposes.

Believe me, it's a strange feeling, out there on that border, knowing that your very presence is being interpreted and used by both sides in ways you cannot control, and may not have intended.

To the left, Barracks T3; the large building behind it is the administrative headquarters of the North Korean security forces in the DMZ.

After the fashion patrol, we were switched into a military bus and headed to a PowerPoint briefing on the history of the DMZ. Like everything else in the DMZ, the briefing had certain political tendencies. The axe murders of US servicemen by North Koreans, and defections by North Koreans and Soviet citizens, were highlighted; the defection of a US soldier was never mentioned. Former North Korean leader Kim Il Sung was billed as an impostor who stole the identity of a great and significantly older hero from the war against the Japanese, thereby tricking the people into supporting him. My guidebook (admittedly the Lonely Planet is not the authoritative source on Korean history, but they do try very hard to be impartial, something most other sources don't even bother trying), however, suggests that this story is probably not true. The evidence suggests that Kim Il Sung actually was a brilliant Korean guerrilla leader, who also happened, unfortunately, to be a Stalinist.

The briefing over, we were moved to "Freedom House," a large, modernist construction that sits just this side of the border. There, at the "Freedom Pagoda" viewing platform, we were allowed, for the first time, to take pictures. Binoculars were also permitted, so I peered through mine at the North Korean side. You could see tourists there, though our guide told us that they were most probably not North Koreans, as they are in most cases not allowed to visit the DMZ. (Similarly, South Koreans must go through an extensive background check and vetting process to gain permission to go, which in practice tends to get translated as "South Koreans are not allowed to go.") Apparently, the North is a relatively popular tourist destination for Chinese and Japanese travelers. Tourist access to North Korea, by all accounts, varies considerably depending on the governmental mood, but at the moment, that mood is pro-tourism.

View from "Freedom Pagoda." At center is the "Peace House" and at the left part of "Freedom House," as well as one of the ubiquitous military tourist buses.

After taking pictures, we were herded down the stairs of the pagoda - "Stay in two lines, please" - and into Freedom House. There, we waited for our turn to enter Barracks T2, site of several talks between northern and southern powers that be. It's one of three blue barracks buildings - T1, T2 and T3 - which, side by side, straddle the country borders lengthwise; half of each building is on the North Korean side, half on the South. Because there were North Korean tourists in the barracks, we had to wait until they were gone before we were even allowed outside. Contact between the two sides is strictly forbidden, and watching the northern tourists through the glass doors, I wondered who was afraid of what. Are both sides worried their citizens - or, more aptly, their visitors or soldiers - will want to defect? Presumably, given widespread reports of a serious famine in North Korea, this is a big issue for the North. But for the South? Anyone who can get to the DMZ and is in the mood for Stalinism and starving can most likely get to North Korea as a tourist, a much less dangerous method of defecting than jumping across the DMZ. (Though, admittedly, probably less sexy as well.) More likely, the issue is to avoid any provocation of North Korean soldiers. Even with the emphasis on security and the seriousness of the location, there were some guys in our tour group goofing off and messing around - not much, but you could see that, given a different group makeup, there could be potential for a nasty, even if somewhat unintentional, incident.

This photo, of North Korean tourists and soldiers (as well as South Korean soldiers, on the near end of the barracks), was taken through the window, while waiting.

The inside of "Freedom House" is as sleek as its cool grey granite-and-steel exterior, with straight lines and minimal furnishings. Off in one corner, though, sat a large mirror with an ornate wood frame and, next to it, a grandfather clock. They were, apparently, gifts, inscribed with Korean and Chinese characters next to dates from 1998.

Then the North Koreans were done with T2, and we were shepherded in. We could take pictures from inside Freedom House, through the glass, but no pictures were allowed anywhere outside. Inside the barracks, two "rock soldiers," as the men on the border are called, stood at attention, one at the far door, one in the middle of our room. They stood in what our guide explained as a Tae Kwon Do ready position; Tae Kwon Do is part of the curriculum in the South Korean army. The interior was not exciting; tables and chairs of the sort you recognize from school, or less well-to-do offices; the windows that ran all around the building were covered in blue curtains. On the center table, in the middle of the table, a microphone and cord marked the exact point at which you left the South and entered the North. Half on one side, half on the other stood a small UN flag; the rock soldier stood at attention there, making sure we knew where the boundary was.

The inside of Barracks T2. The cord across the table marks the border between North and South Korea. The photo is taken from the South, but the soldier at the far end is South Korean. There are no North Korean soldiers in the barracks when tourists enter from the South.

This, we were told, is your chance to enter North Korea, and of course we did, crossing the microphone boundary. Some took pictures of each other: This is me in North Korea. Now we could all say we'd been in North Korea, on North Korean soil, but we hadn't been, not really; we were out of context, escorted by U.S. and South Korean soldiers, a South Korean soldier standing in front of the North Korean door (guarding against entry or exit?).

Through the barracks window, North Korea.

The border is an imaginary space. This is not a map, where the colors on a map change abruptly along a thin black line. There is no natural boundary here; the division runs along the 38th parallel, an invisible line of demarcation in an arbitrary system of measurement. We can't see the border itself; we need aids to make it visible, microphone cords and barbed wire and walls, or we'll walk across it without realizing what we've done. And with those aids, the imaginary of the map becomes real, is enforced, patrolled, and its reality imposed on the people it surrounds and divides. There are families on both sides of this boundary who are missing members, lost across on the other side, to which no communication is possible. There are children who have lost parents, brothers who have not seen their sisters in half a century, who do not know if their loved ones are alive, who cannot even imagine what their lives might be like. In 2000, one hundred South Koreans were allowed to visit relatives in Pyongyang, the North Korean capital. The pictures from those meetings are heartbreaking. And they are only one hundred people. Millions have relatives in the North. Beyond the soldiers, the checkpoints, and the propaganda, this is what the divide means, at its most basic: daughters and fathers and husbands and nieces and uncles and mothers, whole parts of broken families left behind, living completely unknown lives.

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