DPRK: The DMZ

You might think that the Demilitarized Zone would be another of the unsettling experiences of the tour, but in many ways it is far less so than the Memorial Palace or the Friendship Exhibition. For a start, it seemed to me to be much more honest. We had spent the whole morning driving along completely deserted highways; wide, well-maintained, perfectly straight routes that had absolutely no traffic on them. Long distance travel, it seems, is something that doesn't happen in the DPRK. I suppose, had I asked, I would have been told that when everyone is happy where they are they have no need to move. Given that I know that you need permits to travel in much of the country and special permits to enter or reside in the capital, I suspect the truth of the matter is rather more sinister.


We broke to stretch our legs and have a cup of tea at something that was a bit like a very small motorway service station. Only a bit like it as the staff had clearly set up five minutes before we got there and would equally clearly be shifting everything away five minutes after we left. We were the only people there. Hardly surprising as, as far as I could tell, we were the only people on the road. Almost everyone walked out into the middle of the deserted highway to take pictures. When would that ever happen on one of our major routes?
We arrived in the late morning at the DMZ and, after some formalities and hanging around, were driven down a narrow road - with clear points where concrete blocks could, at a moment's notice, be used to render it impassable - to the DMZ itself.


We've done the history lesson that resulted in the creation of this strip of land separating North from South, so we don't need to do it again.
Inside the DMZ you can see the hut where the armistice talks took place, a small and comfortable place; the larger, colder, less friendly hall where the agreement was signed (and an array of photographs and exhibits from the period); the Joint Security area where the actual border is marked by a line across the concrete the neatly bisects the group of blue huts that straddle the border.


You can actually walk around a table in the hut, under the watchful eye of the guards, thus entering South Korea and then re-entering North Korea. This is the one place that you can visit from both countries. (Or from the DPRK perspective, from both halves of the single country.)


A uniformed officer shows you around, explaining everything in Korean, for your guides to translate. He'll even let you take his picture, or pose with you in the one place in the whole country where such a thing is permitted.
There is a fine irony in the name DMZ, given that it is the most heavily armed border on Earth and given that, under their respective flags, the fortress-like buildings that face each other are clearly so heavily armed and protected.
Nevertheless, in its own brutal way, it is much more honest than almost anything else we had seen. Name aside, there is no real pretence here that everything would be fine if only the Americans would stop the brothers in the South from pursuing their desire to join with the North. This is a military base and nobody claims otherwise.