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| Still in South Korea |
Dennis Rodman and I have a few things in common, but I’ll
admit to only one of them: we both have spent time in North Korea.
My visit was brief—just one minute. It
was at Panmunjeom, in the so-called Joint Security Area where the Republic of
Korea (ROK, the south) and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK, the
north) have gone eyeball-to-eyeball since 1953. A conference room (the
“Military Armistice Commission Conference Room”) was built right on the line
between two sides, half formally within the territories of each, to accommodate
their very rare discussions. DMZ tourists can stroll around the felt-covered
table on the armistice line, and be formally subject to the authority of Kim
Jong-Un.
As political fictions go, my trip to the
DPRK could have been more convincing. The conference room itself looks like the
Cold War artifact it is—except for the UN sky blue paint-job outside and
inside, which makes it seem vaguely like a pre-school. No doubt to discourage defections,
the North Koreans rarely post their soldiers inside the building anymore.
Instead, they’ve been known to peep in the windows from time to time, ogling whatever
VIPs might have dropped in. Two ROK soldiers are usually inside, incongruously
wearing shades (“designed to present an intimidating appearance”), standing in
“modified tae kwon do postures”.
Though they might be designed to be intimidating, the ROK guys I saw were
hardly physical specimens. “Lean and mean” would be a generous way of
describing them. The only action they’ve seen recently, according to our US
Army guide, was to “jack up” a Japanese tourist who made the mistake of
stepping behind a guard’s back. “It was the funniest thing I ever saw,” the
American said, not long after he complained that his tour in the DMZ was
“mind-numbingly dull”.
When it comes to living on the most
heavily militarized border in the world, maybe a dull day is a good day. Things
seem to be getting more interesting for a different reason, though, as South
Korea seems determined to make the DMZ into a complete tourist experience. We
saw busloads of visitors, in numbers worthy of high summer in Disney World, at
such dubious landmarks as “The Third Infiltration Tunnel” (an invasion route
from the North that was discovered before completion), and “The 1976 Ax Murder
Site” (where a gang of North Koreans murdered two Americans with hatchets). The
new train station at Dorasan was celebrated in 2002 as the first link in the
chain of reunification, but the rail connection to Pyongyang never went through.
Now tourists pay 500 won (about 50
cents) for the privilege of standing on the platform to watch mostly empty
trains go a few miles, to the Kaesong Industrial Complex, and no farther.
Maybe all this is hard for Americans to
understand because we have no comparable landmarks. The DMZ isn’t a battlefield
in a war won and lost long ago, like Gettysburg; the conflict has simply gone
on ever since, by other means. Between paranoia in the North and reunification
fantasies in the South, there doesn’t seem to be much room for quiet reflection,
for drawing lessons from the nightmare of history.
The tourist materials boast that the DMZ,
so long undeveloped, is now a paradise for wildlife. We have to take their word
for it: the Zone still represents the world’s largest mine field, so there
won’t be any eco-tourism in it soon. “Yes, animals get blown up sometimes,”
says our guide, anticipating my question without any outward awareness of its
absurdity, of deer tripping on land mines. In the new DMZ, maybe that’s a
missed opportunity—they can offer not just wildlife-watching, but
wildlife-suicide-watching.
© 2013 Nicholas Nicastro
