Yes, it’s another terrible pun from your friends here at Blogativity. The zone I’m referring to is the Demilitarized Zone, or the DMZ as it’s affectionately known.
The DMZ is a 2.5-mile wide neutral zone between North and South Korea that was created in 1953 at the end of the Korean War. How did Korea get divided in the first place? Well, Japan invaded and annexed Korea in 1910, but was forced to surrender it at the end of WWII. And like several other parts of the world at the end of that war, the Allies and the USSR each took a slice. Then in 1950, the Russia-backed North invaded the West-aligned South. After three years of pointless fighting, we got a treaty and the DMZ.
Because not that many people live there, the DMZ has become an ecological haven for all kinds of wildlife. It’s a glimpse of what the planet might look like if billions of humans weren’t mucking it up so thoroughly.
Most of the DMZ remains a dangerous territory. You can get shot for being in it, and there are lots of old but still active landmines lying about. But it’s also a huge tourist destination, and the local peeps make sure the tourists are never in danger. At least, that’s what they told us.
One of the fun things you get to do in the DMZ is walk (almost crawl) along a section of a tunnel that the North secretly dug in the hopes of sending troops through for a surprise invasion of the South. Several such tunnels were discovered by the South before they were finished. I can’t show you a picture of the tunnel we were in because we weren’t allowed to take any pictures.
We also got a live glimpse of North Korea from the DMZ observation deck. In the near distance, you can see a fake town that the North maintains which doesn’t fool anyone, and further in the distance, some skyscrapers and other buildings of a real North Korean city called Kaesŏng. We weren’t allowed to take photos of any of that stuff either.
Back in Seoul, we visited the Korean War Memorial. It’s a moving tribute to all the people from all over the world who died in an effort to help the Korean people.
I just find the whole two Koreas thing so sad. It’s a country that wasn’t in any way responsible for WWII, but as a result of that conflict, ended up carved in half with no say in the matter whatsoever. Many families were separated forever, and the economic divide between North and South keeps getting worse. On top of that, it seems that, as time passes, there is less and less enthusiasm for reunification, since there are fewer and fewer people old enough to remember what it was like to belong to only one Korea.
I guess the concept of two Koreas has become accepted in the modern world. But I don’t think it should be. I think it should be a constant source of shame for the human race. Because, you know, is this really the best we can do?
Amazing experience !!!
Sad!
I had the pleasure of visiting South Korea in the late 1990s. Steve Cha, then a professor at KAIST invited me to give a keynote and tutorial at a security conference in Seoul and to visit his university in Daejeon. Steve met me at the airport and we traveled by the local city bus to a long distance bus station for the trip to Daejeon. This bus ran on a reserved lane on the highway which was good because the car lanes were crawling. Steve said that he never drove to Seoul because of the traffic. After a weekend of sightseeing and walking in the countryside and a couple of days visiting at KAIST, we took the bus back to Seoul for the conference. I think that Korea is the only place I have visited where I needed a guide as I could not read any of the signs.