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De-Militarized Zone
Magwang
Veteran
(or: Run!! DMZ!!!)
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In November 2004 we toured inside the DMZ facing North Korea. These photos were taken at the Dora Observatory (named after my daughter's favorite TV cartoon character).
It is not far from Panmunjeon, site of the cease-fire talks (no truce exists - North and South Korea have been at a war ready stance for 50 years now).
We also went down into the tunnels that we could not photograph at all. This is where both sides were digging until the South caught the DPRK soldiers ready to move inside the South! Several divisions are ready to run south through the tunnels in an hour. Yikes!
The whole visit was very creepy, especially seeing the US Apache helicopters overhead. Over a vast area of land along the 38th parallel deer and other animals set off the land-mines.
Nuclear Sphyncter Factor: 9.5
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In November 2004 we toured inside the DMZ facing North Korea. These photos were taken at the Dora Observatory (named after my daughter's favorite TV cartoon character).
It is not far from Panmunjeon, site of the cease-fire talks (no truce exists - North and South Korea have been at a war ready stance for 50 years now).
We also went down into the tunnels that we could not photograph at all. This is where both sides were digging until the South caught the DPRK soldiers ready to move inside the South! Several divisions are ready to run south through the tunnels in an hour. Yikes!
The whole visit was very creepy, especially seeing the US Apache helicopters overhead. Over a vast area of land along the 38th parallel deer and other animals set off the land-mines.
Nuclear Sphyncter Factor: 9.5
- Guards at the entrance to the Dora Observatory
- The "Photo Line" is the closest you are allowed to take pictures facing north. If I stepped forward, I would have been dragged away by MP's
- The fence is posted with letters to family members trapped in the North.
- The Train Station ready to connect to the north someday at Freedom Bridge, where prisoner exchanges are made.
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Comments
I spent a whole lotta time looking at pictures of North Korea posted online by a Russian man who went on one of those N. Korean tours. He managed to take a whole bunch of forbidden pictures and got in trouble a few times but nothing really bad happened to him. He said that foreigners can't travel around N. Korea like we can in other countries. All foreigners coming into the country have to be escorted the entire time by a "tour guide" who keeps them in line and prevents them from going anywhere forbidden or taking forbidden pictures, which are pictures of anything that is not expressly allowed by the state.
I found the "model farm" pictures to be pretty creepy. This was a farm where N. Korean tours stopped to let the foreigners see how the people lived. It was set up to look as normal as possible and even had a computer in the living room, but it wasn't hooked up.
I understand there is no internet access in N. Korea, nor cell phone service of any kind. Complete control over communications. There was also a picture of a library or school, I forget, and in one of the rooms there were computer monitors on every table like work stations but none of them were hooked up to anything and there were no keyboards. It was set up to look like people had computer access when they actually don't.
The photos of the cities, especially the capital, were so very depressing. They were uniformly gray and treeless with houses all jammed together under the shadows of high rise apartments. Although the streets were very wide and paved there were no cars around at all. And I understand bicycles are prohibitively expensive.
They also had strange cartoon characters that looked like they were made out of papier mache dotting the roads and highways holding traffic signs and directional signs. Very odd. I wonder if that is an attempt to keep the people in a childlike state of powerlessness.
The whole thing is fascinatingly grotesque and extremely disturbing at the same time. My overall impression is one of uniform grayness everywhere.