JSA/ DMZ

I have been waiting for Mike to write this post for almost 2 weeks already. There has been other stuff going on here as well but I will write about that later. For now enjoy this post from Mike. He went to the JSA/DMZ with work a few weeks ago, and when he came home he had quite an experience to tell me about. I will get there someday to share my account as well, but for now enjoy the words of Mike!

I finally got the pictures from our JSA/DMZ tour on 26 September so here is the scoop.  We started the day off by meeting LTC Brannen at the Dragon Hill Lodge, and then got on the bus to head up to area I.  Along the way LTC Brannen played tour guide. All the way up route 1, he pointed out the numerous coastal and land defenses that the ROK(Republic of Korea aka South Korea) has placed along the maritime boarder between them and the DPRK(Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea aka North Korea).  We were given an interesting opportunity to observe North Korean Observation posts, which were basically small clumps of trees visible across the river.  The civilian people of North Korea can only get so close to an observation post before the DPRK Soldiers will fire on them. So the DPRK actually cleared out the trees around the posts in order to have fire wood and food (yes they apparently are so bad off that the people consume the roots of the trees to survive).  Our first official stop on the tour was Camp Bonifas, here we received an overview of the United Nations Command (UNC) mission in securing the boarder and deterring aggression between the two countries, they are still technically at war having only signed an armistice agreement between military forces and have no formal political treaty to end the war.

UN  meeting room

If you look close enough there is a North Korean standing in the doorway of the building with binoculars.

 From here we got back on the bus and traveled to Panmunjeom (Unification Village) AKA the Joint Security Area (JSA).  Standing at the JSA was a little unnerving, it was very quiet and we were under the constant observation from the North Korean Soldiers just a few hundred meters away.  It is here at the JSA where all negotiations between North and South Korea are mediated by the United Nations.  It is a highly ritualized and mostly symbolic event when the two nations do meet.  Since this area is where North Korea gets the most exposure with the world there is a constant rivalry and occurrence of "one up man ship". For example when the ROK built the Freedom House the North actually put an addition onto their Pan-Mun Gak Pavilion just so that is was taller than the ROK structure.  This is also the case with the huge flag flown in the North Korean "Propaganda Village" that is over 600 lbs when dry, and if it rains it must actually be taken down or it tears under its own weight.  So I guess you could equate North Korea to a spoiled kid, one with access to nuclear, biological and chemical weapons.  These competitions got so out of hand at one point that there was a meeting between the two nations to determine the size and design of structures and flags within the DMZ.

Looking out at North Korea

North Korean Observation post, they were watching!!!

The tall thing in the distance of the far left of the picture is the flag pole referred to above

 Once we had heard all there was to say and get our pictures taken with the ROK Soldiers on guard we moved on to the site of the "Axe Murders".  In 1976 a detail under the command of CPT Bonifas was dispatched to trim a tree that was obscuring the line of sight between an observation post and a checkpoint.  Well apparently North Korean folk don't take too kindly to having the wonderful Kim II Sung's tree pruned so they jumped the detail and beat/hacked CPT Bonifas and his Lieutenant to death with the very axes they brought to trim the tree with.  The United States was quite put off by this and decided that the damn tree would receive the most expensive pruning in world history.  Operation Paul Bunyan was the resulting payback.  The entire South Korean/ US military on the peninsula went into high alert, the air force patrolled the skies and an aircraft carrier was sitting right off the coast all to cover one engineer platoon to trim tree.  After 42 minutes and a few chain saws the tree was sufficiently trimmed to the point where it was nothing more than a defoliated 20" trunk, we left the trunk just cause we wanted to flip North Korea the big ol' middle finger, the trunk was later removed entirely.

Monument for the tree

Group shot on the bridge of no return

 After this little story we were pretty hungry so we rode out on our bus to the seemingly middle of random nowhere to an interesting little restaurant where we cooked and consumed spicy pork compliments of Uncle Sam of course.  After the meal we headed out to infiltration tunnel #3.  It is estimated that there are about 20ish tunnels crossing the DMZ into South Korea, only 4 have been discovered.  Like everything North Korea has failed at we turned tunnel #3 into a tourist attraction just to rub the salt a little deeper in to the festering wound.  This particular tunnel was discovered in 1978 in a deliberate attempt to counter DPRK infiltration shenanigans after a defector tipped off the government to its whereabouts.  Once discovered a large earth boring machine was used to cut a 500 meter long tunnel 350 meters below the surface.  Walking down into the depths of this was like being in one of those cheesy horror movies where you are the first group of people to bust into a long hidden cavern or facility from the past world.  I could not help but expect to be attacked by giant ants, or blind cave dwelling mutants on the decent but it was quite un eventful.  Once we hit the North Korean portion of the tunnel we all felt very tall as the ceilings were literally only between 4-5 feet high further assisting us in demonizing the North Korean troops into evil midget mole people.  Only around 600 meters of this tunnel was still accessible as the ROK military had installed several 10+ meter thick concrete walls to make the tunnel unusable as an infiltration route into the south.  At the end was a dilapidated guard post that had been last manned up until a few years ago.  The trip back up was far more difficult as the machine had cut a 30 degree slope down into the tunnel that was much easier to feel and hate on the way back to the surface.  Upon completing our ascent we took a few photos of the info booths in the visitor center area where I then discovered a little train that ferry's passengers below ground and back, this baby was of course shut down for the day.

The next stop was Dora observatory.  This location I found to be very interesting as it provided an excellent view quite far into North Korea.  The only signs of life we saw however was a convoy of South Korean trucks crossing returning with some North Korean made swag from the Kaesong Industrial Complex (the only currently open location where trade is permitted between the countries).  This location has become very important to the North Korean economy as it is one of the few ways that their goods can leave the country...and who wouldn't want to purchase North Korean lichens of varied size, and I shit you not... baby seal penis wine (I wish I had a camera to take a pic of this).  At any rate 250 ROK companies makes out like bandits on this deal as well, (although they supply 100% of the electrical power to run the complex) as they get to turn their raw materials into finished products utilizing very cheap North Korean labor.  Other than this traffic there was nothing, it was what I envision the world looking like after the super flu/ zombie apocalypse has decimated 99.9% of the human population.  Our final stop was to Dorsan station.  This is the last stop northward on the South's rail line...or first stop into the South if you are a North Korean (hypothetically) entering South Korea.  I actually was able to purchase 2 tickets to paradise (Pyongyang, capital of North Korea) for 2000 Won, what a deal!!.  The point of this train station is as far as we could tell is to serve as a symbol of South Korean willingness to reconcile and unite the two Koreas into one; this too was deserted (with the exception of the "ticket lady) much like a post apocalyptic train station would be. 

Tickets to North Korea

So that's it, the ride back to Yongsan was a nice time to nap and we all took advantage of the opportunity.  If your ever up in the neighborhood, I would encourage you to take a trip to the JSA/DMZ so you too can catch a glimpse into the worlds most isolated nation. ~ Mike