The sense of reality though was rather quickly dispelled when we left the DMZ. We drove for some time through land that was more fertile than we had seen in the north and villages that were a little more substantial but the overall standard of living and the complete lack of modern farming methods (by which I mean from the last six centuries) was unchanged. We were on our way to something called "the Concrete Wall". One of our group was a political historian with a special interest in Korea and he had never heard of this edifice. Nor, it transpired, had anyone else on the bus. To give the DPRK viewpoint I will quote from another leaflet that I picked up.
"The Korean people are a homogeneous nation of the same blood that has lived for many centuries in the same territory, using one language.
Over their 5000 years of history, they have created a brilliant culture and enjoyed a harmonious life. However since the end of the Second World War, when US troops occupied the south area of Korea in 1945, the Korean people have been living in a country divided for over half a century...
...The concrete wall, which runs from east to west, was built by the south Korean puppet clique at the instigation of the US imperialists, their masters, in order to divide the nation into two for ever.
It is 5-8 m high, 10-19 m wide at the bottom and 3-7 m wide in the upper part., and fitted out with pillboxes, lookouts and other military establishments. It is 240 km long"
Before I give my opinion about the wall, let me continue for a moment to describe what we saw and the circumstances in which we saw it.
We drove away from the DMZ for around forty minutes and arrived at a car park in the middle of nowhere at the foot of a small hill. We walked up the hill into a dull and functional military-style building. Behind the building, in a dugout trench, a row of binoculars and telescopes were mounted on fixed tripod bases, looking out across a barren and empty stretch of ground. In the very far distance there was a road visible with some traffic on it. Halfway between us and that road was a stretch of what looked like wall, though it was hardly visible without the use of the binoculars and telescopes. Here and there were things that might have been military observation towers.
The details of the walls construction were explained to us and the evils of the American overlords who had demanded it made clear. Comparisons were made with the Berlin Wall.
There are, as even the most determinedly non-militaristic can see, a number of problems with all of this. First and foremost is that the question "who gains" is ignored altogether. Coming from the west and having taught English to any number of South Koreans I can state absolutely that I have never met a single one who wanted to be reunited with the North, especially if that meant giving up the high standard of life that they have now to join a regime ruled by such a dynasty and essentially hurl themselves back to a repressive feudalism. Whether they are right or not is irrelevant. It is in their interest to encourage defectors from the North, to make it easier, not harder, for such people to enter South Korea. (Of course the DPRK position is that everyone there is happy in paradise so there are no defectors, in the same way that they need no prisons because there are no criminals.)
Secondly there is the construction of the wall. It has, they say a north facing, vertical wall of up to 8m and a south facing sloping wall. In what way is this an effective fortification? Sure it would prevent the immediate advance of tanks from the north but it would also prevent the advance from the south. An eight metre vertical drop wouldn't be very easy to negotiate, would it? Then there is the manpower and the effort and the time that would have been required to build as opposed to, say, laying a minefield.
Of course there is that Berlin Wall comparison to look at as well. That was built by the East to keep their people in, rather than by the West to keep them out. This tends to be far more typical of such measures.
Then of course there is another set of questions to be asked. If it really is across the whole length of the border then why did we need a forty minute drive to get to it when we were already at the border? Truly I had no idea where we were. We could have been at the border of fifty km away from it for all any of us knew. We were also looking at it through binoculars from a kilometre away. It could just as easily have been made of polystyrene as concrete.
All in all there was nothing convincing about it, either in concept or execution, though it was rather creepy to hear the North Korean descriptions of it, delivered with every appearance of sincerity.
Over their 5000 years of history, they have created a brilliant culture and enjoyed a harmonious life. However since the end of the Second World War, when US troops occupied the south area of Korea in 1945, the Korean people have been living in a country divided for over half a century...
...The concrete wall, which runs from east to west, was built by the south Korean puppet clique at the instigation of the US imperialists, their masters, in order to divide the nation into two for ever.
It is 5-8 m high, 10-19 m wide at the bottom and 3-7 m wide in the upper part., and fitted out with pillboxes, lookouts and other military establishments. It is 240 km long"
Before I give my opinion about the wall, let me continue for a moment to describe what we saw and the circumstances in which we saw it.
We drove away from the DMZ for around forty minutes and arrived at a car park in the middle of nowhere at the foot of a small hill. We walked up the hill into a dull and functional military-style building. Behind the building, in a dugout trench, a row of binoculars and telescopes were mounted on fixed tripod bases, looking out across a barren and empty stretch of ground. In the very far distance there was a road visible with some traffic on it. Halfway between us and that road was a stretch of what looked like wall, though it was hardly visible without the use of the binoculars and telescopes. Here and there were things that might have been military observation towers.
The details of the walls construction were explained to us and the evils of the American overlords who had demanded it made clear. Comparisons were made with the Berlin Wall.
There are, as even the most determinedly non-militaristic can see, a number of problems with all of this. First and foremost is that the question "who gains" is ignored altogether. Coming from the west and having taught English to any number of South Koreans I can state absolutely that I have never met a single one who wanted to be reunited with the North, especially if that meant giving up the high standard of life that they have now to join a regime ruled by such a dynasty and essentially hurl themselves back to a repressive feudalism. Whether they are right or not is irrelevant. It is in their interest to encourage defectors from the North, to make it easier, not harder, for such people to enter South Korea. (Of course the DPRK position is that everyone there is happy in paradise so there are no defectors, in the same way that they need no prisons because there are no criminals.)
Secondly there is the construction of the wall. It has, they say a north facing, vertical wall of up to 8m and a south facing sloping wall. In what way is this an effective fortification? Sure it would prevent the immediate advance of tanks from the north but it would also prevent the advance from the south. An eight metre vertical drop wouldn't be very easy to negotiate, would it? Then there is the manpower and the effort and the time that would have been required to build as opposed to, say, laying a minefield.
Of course there is that Berlin Wall comparison to look at as well. That was built by the East to keep their people in, rather than by the West to keep them out. This tends to be far more typical of such measures.
Then of course there is another set of questions to be asked. If it really is across the whole length of the border then why did we need a forty minute drive to get to it when we were already at the border? Truly I had no idea where we were. We could have been at the border of fifty km away from it for all any of us knew. We were also looking at it through binoculars from a kilometre away. It could just as easily have been made of polystyrene as concrete.
All in all there was nothing convincing about it, either in concept or execution, though it was rather creepy to hear the North Korean descriptions of it, delivered with every appearance of sincerity.
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