Thoughts on the Demilitarized Zone, Thoughts on Home

Over my winter break, I had the opportunity to visit Korea's Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) - the 2.5 mile wide no-man's-land that divides North and South Korea. I did this twice: once during my dad's visit on the western end of the country, and once with a fellow ETA on the eastern coast, and these visits were definitely some of the most striking moments from my grant year so far. Some background info on the DMZ: although North and South Korea signed an armistice agreement, technically the two sides are still at war because they never signed a treaty. The Demilitarized Zone is now a buffer area that separates the two halves, and it is almost entirely uninhabited except for two villages (more on that in a bit) and a Joint Security Area that has large numbers of troops on both sides, despite the being within the demilitarized zone.

Because there are so few people across the length of the border, the area has become an unintentional wildlife preserve, which the South Korean government actually uses to promote the DMZ as a tourist and vacation destination. In a weird way, it works. There's even a DMZ train that takes passengers through this space, although people can't actually wander outside specific tourist sites because there are leftover landmines everywhere. According to the U.S. soldier that led part of our tour, "There are just too many for us to take them out."

The two ends of the DMZ that I saw were also really different - the section in Gyeonggi-do, closer to Seoul, has very tight security and is only accessible through official tour groups, whereas the eastern coast is nearly the opposite and they didn't even ask for identification. The strict regulations and tours in Gyeonggi-do also meant that we got more information, especially when visiting the JSA where official talks and negotiations take place.

And here's a strange thing about public visits: the Joint Security Area (JSA), which is heavily supported by the U.S. military presence, is not actually open to South Korean visitors. Only foreigners are allowed to visit on tours led by American soldiers. Apparently, this is because in 1984, a Soviet living in North Korea was on North-led tour of the JSA when he defected south by sprinting across the military demarcation line (aka the border, marked by a series of evenly spaced blocks). This caused a shootout in which three soldiers were killed, and now South Koreans are no longer allowed to tour the area on the crazy chance that one of them defects north and causes more violence. This kind of thing seems unimaginable, but the soldier that led our JSA tour was even required to ask our group if any of us planned on defecting into North Korea that day.

In both the west and the east of the DMZ, I visited several landmarks. Yet, what stood out most was not any place that I visited, but rather what I learned about the two villages that exist inside this buffer zone. The armistice agreement allowed each side to maintain one village from before the war. In South Korea, they preserved Taesong-dong, a farming town of about 200 people, nicknamed "Freedom Village." The residents of the town have a special status in which they're exempt from the military draft and paid salaries by the South Korean government, but they're also tightly regulated and have an 11pm curfew each night. On the North Korean side is a village called Kijong-dong, ironically named "Peace Village" by the North and referred to as "Propaganda Village" in the South.

What's fascinating about Kijong-dong is that it's not really a village at all - it's a collection of 1950s era empty buildings and houses, designed to appear like an ideal communist town. However, when one zooms in, it becomes clear that the concrete houses are empty shells with no glass in the windows and fake doors painted onto the walls. Lights come on and off on a timer each day, and occasionally people sweep the streets to give the illusion of activity. There is also a giant loudspeaker that blasts propaganda across the border, presumably to try to get South Koreans to defect north (South Korea also blasts its own loudspeakers with news and weather reports, anti-Pyongyang propaganda, and even k-pop music). The loudspeakers initially contained nationalistic messages about the Kim regime and descriptions of Kijong-dong as a utopian place to live. When that was unsuccessful in attracting South Koreans, they switched to anti-West propaganda instead.

To me, Kijong-dong is bizarrely intriguing because this tiny facade of a village is a tangible symbol of the North Korean government. The fake buildings are designed to project an ideal image outward, with the assumption that no one will get too close to actually see the flaws. Once you do, you're already stuck.

To be clear, there's a lot that I don't know about North Korea. There's a lot that most people don't know. But, being in such close proximity has made me want to learn as much as I can, and I've often wondered what kind of person I would be if I grew up as a North Korean. We'd all like to think that in such a twisted, propaganda-heavy society, we'd be the smart critical thinkers who understand that the rooms are empty and the doors are not real. We'd see the violence and stark human rights abuses staring us in the face and know that in some realm, that's not normal. And yet, throughout the length of the Kim regime, there have been intelligent, goodhearted people who were willing to die for their abusive leaders and believed that the 'American bastards' were the root of all problems. It was the only thing they knew to be true. Would I have been one of those people? Honestly, it's possible.

As globalization continues, more and more outside information is leaking into the country. South Korea is handling an increasing number of defectors every year, and from interviews and books it seems that the younger generations are starting to become disillusioned. Rather than devote their hearts and souls, many are simply going through the motions demanded of them. North Korea shows how access to information, and especially the quality of information, can make a world of difference in understanding the truth. I recently read a book called Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea, and one of the defectors interviewed actually wanted to return to North Korea for weeks after she left. Her escape had been set up by her already-defected daughter and was almost accidental, so she was paranoid that what she saw outside North Korea, especially the news reports and media, was designed to trick her. She ate white rice (a huge luxury) made from an automatic rice cooker (a nonexistent appliance in North Korea) every day, watched a television and listened to South Korean radio broadcasts, and it still took her days to understand that what she seeing was not a construction of lies because she had been ingrained with such strong ideology from the government. Her mistrust of the rest of the world almost sent her back.

When a leader creates confusion between fact and fiction, between what is credible and what is not, the results can be powerful.

Looking in on Kijong-dong from the outside, it's obvious that the village is an absurd show. It's uniformly manicured, surrounded by rice fields, and completely empty. The North Korean government even erected an enormous flagpole with the sole purpose of standing taller than the flag in Taesong-dong. Who would see that as a safe haven, a utopian place to live? Who would actually defect into North Korea? But for the North Korean government, this tactic is perfectly logical. For years on the inside, it's worked.

Joint Security Area, facing North Korea