Korean DMZ
Pictures taken December 4, 2005

The DMZ - Demilitarized Zone - is a nation-wide gash that cuts a country in half; miles and miles of barbed wire and cartoon posters depicting the explosive results of When Foot Meets Landmine promise a fierce death for any Korean who dare to abandon their ideology. Gun turrets and pillboxes on both sides remind good North Korean communists and good South Korean capitalists not to make a border run for the false freedoms pledged by the evil loudspeaker recordings of the other side: "Capitalism will eat all your precious rotting kimchi cabbage and there'll be none left for the winter!" "Communism will rape your dead grandmother twelve times, and then one more time!" Oh granny...

The border has been relatively benign for a while now - the DMZ hosts weekly peace talks and face-to-face hostilities only kindle when Time Magazine is in town looking for a sexy cover story to capture the hearts and minds of Informed America. In fact, the DMZ itself is only a swarthy cut of land where, as a propaganda movie kindly informed us, all manner of wildlife is thriving. Birds nest on giant bronze statues of idolized leaders. Squirrels do squirrelly things in peace. There are probably fish too, and maybe dinosaurs. The point is that the DMZ is stop-motion still, a hallowed valley of breathless silence over which combatants in a long-frozen war stare at each other from behind chain-link fences. And tourists come and look into the hole and are inevitably disappointed when it tells them nothing.

One frigid morning, I was one of those tourists. Because the Demilitarized Zone is all, you know, locked up on account of political tension and guns and that sort of thing, you can't just wander up to the border whenever you feel like it. You really have to go on a tour to be a tourist. So we went with Adventure Korea. The American Army USO tour is also supposed to be really good, although they take you within photographic distance of the North Korean fences and you have to dress like some kind of model citizen so you don't get your picture taken and used for anti-capitalist propaganda: "Hey North Korean comrades... check out how UGLY and UNSHAVEN these Westerners are! They are wearing BLUE JEANS. Their faith in the dollar has PIGGIFIED them, and so we have taken them hostage in the great name of our god. Kim Jong-Il. Speaking of which, this public service announcement was made possible by him. Kim Jong-Il. Yep, he's invincible."

So basically you aren't allowed to wear blue jeans on the USO tour.

Anyway, our trip began with a cab ride over to the rendezvous station, rubbing sleep from our eyes and wearing slovenly day-old blue jeans, to catch our tour bus and see the ultra-censored majesty of the Demilitarized Zone.

After about an hour and a half of driving, and useless icebreakers in which we learnt that virtually everyone on the tour was Canadian, we arrived at Imjingak to get our passports processed. Imjingak is the furthest north civilians can go without military permission.

Two friendly border guards immediately took Mike into custody and confiscated his spy documents, heroin stash and eight hand grenades. The guards were short and stubby, almost ridiculously so, and it was hard to take their authority seriously.

Koreans appear to be quite fond of building big bells in little towers, and Imjingak was no exception. This bell was named the Peace Bell, which probably means that if Korea is ever reunified then it will ring loud and true with the clanging notes of peace and solidarity, and all the nearby chicken hatcheries will go mad with clucking and flapping and avian fear. This day, however, the Peace Bell was tied up firmly so no stupid foreigners could accidentally declare peace and save the day.

The Freedom Bridge was a bridge of freedom. It was used to exchange prisoners after the Korean war, which I guess would be a pretty great thing to do, if you were a bridge.

The Freedom Bridge even had its very own name tag! The Korean part, loosely translated, reads: "Bridges rule, tunnels drool."

It was a very, very cold bridge. In the background you can see a rail line that connects North and South Korea. Unsurprisingly, no trains have run for quite a while, which is a shame because I really wanted a train in the background of this photo and how fucking insensitive is that - to stop running trains when the only thing I ever wanted from this country was a DMZ picture with a train happily chugging across the border behind me?? Korea sucks.

Here is a fence with lots of gay pride.

Or maybe it was Korean pride. Or a barbed wire trade show. I couldn't really figure it out.

We left some helpful advice for divided Koreans to remember long after we, the mighty tourists, were gone.

We also browsed the Freedom Bridge souvenir stand which was tactically placed right beside a series of commemorative photos and, strangely enough, tinny speakers playing old American rock songs. At the tourist trap - er, memory shop - you could buy ACTUAL PIECES OF BARBED WIRE FROM THE DMZ, and T-SHIRTS and HATS and KEY CHAINS. OMG! I bought nothing because the Cold War doesn't need any more encouragement.

This alter-type thing is named Manngbaedan, which is a pretty sweet name if you ask me. South Koreans who have left behind homes in the North come here on the holy days Chusok (Thanksgiving) and New Year's Day (New Year's Day) to pray to their ancestors and meditate and destroy you.

Isn't it pretty useless to have a fancy train-crossing set up without any trains? I mean, you could do some stupid analysis about how the prominence of the train-crossing accentuates and highlights the absence of North-South communication and contact. But I think the more pressing issue is: Where are the trains for my picture?

I wonder if the person who translated this memorial into English was American. The wording seems a bit sycophantic, especially with the hindsight that the Brave Sons never went back home to Wonderful America but instead decided to spend their days whoring around Itaewon and causing trouble with the locals.

YOU SEE THREE GRANITE STATUES COVERED IN SNOW. ONE OF THE STATUES IS WEARING NERDY EMO GLASSES AND APPEARS TO BE HOLDING A MEAT CLEAVER. THE SCENE SORTA REMINDS YOU OF HARRY POTTER WHICH IS TERRIFYING BECAUSE WHY SHOULD A WAR MEMORIAL REMIND YOU OF HARRY POTTER, OF ALL THINGS? YOU SHOULD BE THINKING ABOUT SACRIFICE AND JESUS ON A CROSS AND GRANITE GAMES OF CAPTURE-THE-FLAG.

GRANITE GAMES OF CAPTURE-THE-FLAG?

YES. GRANITE GAMES OF CAPTURE-THE-FLAG. CHECK IT OUT.

Oh look: a train! Well that's handy. I guess I can stop complaining now, and talking about capture the flag in capital letters. And, of course, you can see the Super Viking thrill ride in the background, which is the perfect finale to any somber memorial tour.

After we all laughed about how weird it was that the Super Viking was parked directly in the middle of Imjingak, in the middle of this place that was supposedly so very reverential and sacred, we reboarded the bus and zipped off to lunch. Lunch was past the military checkpoint, in the actual meat and potatoes of the DMZ. An armed soldier strode up and down the isles of the bus, checking passports, and I got excited thinking that he might pistolwhip somebody for having a bad ID photo. Maybe it would even be me! But sadly it looked like he was well past his pistolwhipping prime. The rigors of checking tourist IDs for years had slowly defeated his will to whip.

Lunch was just a bunch of Korean side dishes, like you would ordinarily get in a barbeque galbi place, except there was no galbi. No barbeque. Just side dishes of weird beans and weird tofucakes (like pancakes but with tofu!) and kimchi, which can't be weird because it's so goddamn predominant in this country. It was ho-hum fare, but then we got to see some old women pouring big vats of beans all over the place which was pretty cool:

These beans were hot and smelled mildly gross. But the women never stopped pouring and mixing them, and then somebody tasted the beans right off the mixing spoon and - OH NO - the befouled spoon went straight back into the bean porridge. And I remember reflecting on our lunch and wondering whether or not I had eaten the beans and then OH NO, I sure did eat them. The women smiled at me then; big, toothy, leery grins. Somebody had asked them to pose for a photograph.

Inside the Bean Hut, baskets steamed in the sunlight and filled the shack with the unearthly scent of drying beans. There's not too much more I can say about Korean beans at this point, except that I don't like them.

We ran from the beans and our trusty bus took us to Tunnel Number 3. I have no pictures of Tunnel Number 3 because I was told that I couldn't take any pictures of the tunnel, which pissed me off. And why should I carry my stupid camera around if it is prohibited from photographing cool things (like tunnels, per se)?

Anyway, at this place we were treated to a short propaganda film which struggled mightily to make us understand that the DMZ was a beautiful, harmonic place of nature - until, of course, peace comes and the mighty powers of Korean industry once again began to churn in unison and turn the vales into parking lots. And that would be just wonderful, despite the fact that all the nature we just told you about will be shot to hell. So, please, let us all pray for peace and remember that KTX© brand trains are our only hope for reunification and perhaps even the continued survival of the human race. It was all very cumbersome, a heavy load of laughable advertising and ideology to carry for those who just wanted to tromp around some tunnel for a bit.

Afterwards, we shuffled around a mini-museum dedicated to war things and, more interestingly, some information about the Tunnels. See, back in the day, North Korea had this crazy plan to dig a tunnel straight to Seoul: a tunnel large enough to move tens of thousands of conquering communists into the South. As each tunnel was discovered, a new tunnel was built because let's face it: this is a bomb-ass invasion plan and three or four failures certainly doesn't mean to give up. It's estimated that there are twenty or so more tunnels out there that haven't been discovered yet, which is a reassuring thought for those of us living in Seoul. However, I like to think that eventually somebody in the North decided that digging tunnels was a stupid idea, which it is, and that it was finally time to train squid to kill capitalists. So let's all watch out for the Red Army of Squid now instead, okay?

The museum also had a brilliant expose on THE GRUESOME AXE MASSACRE, otherwise known as THE BLOODY HAND AXE SLAYINGS and THE HORRIFYING INCIDENT OF AXE CHOPPY-CHOP. This earth-shattering event was basically just this one time that some American army guys wanted to chop down a tree and some North Korean army guys didn't want them to, and then the Americans lost the argument by getting their heads caved in with hand axes. Woooo.

After the museum, we all got excited for the tunnel because we found a neato mine train and some hard hats to wear as we rode the mine train down the tunnel to tourism victory! But then we found out that we hadn't paid for the train, we had paid to walk, and we were all led rather morosely to a steep vertical incline and told to be careful and "Haha, is good exercise!" as we trotted down it. And at the bottom was the actual tunnel, which was blasted out of the stone with dynamite once-upon-a-time and I couldn't help but think that the North Koreans could've been more sensitive about the tunnel height. Why was the ceiling so low? Couldn't they blast just a bit higher, to allow the taller tunnel-walkers of the future to walk upright through the tunnel once it was captured? This was Tunnel Number 3: surely at this point they had realized that their efforts would one day turn into a tourism hotspot, just as Tunnel Number 2 and Tunnel Number 1 had.

So I walked along, repeatedly bashing my head off jagged stone ledges and intensely grateful for my hard hat. Along the tunnel, we read placard after placard that sought to assure us of the Northernness of the tunnel's construction: "The blast marks and incline of the tunnel CLEARLY SHOW that the North was responsible for building this tunnel, although they say otherwise. THIS REVEALS THE TRUE DUPLICITY AND TWO-FACEDNESS OF THE NORTH!!" After reading several similar placards, I began reacting to them with reverse-psychology. I started imagining South Koreans feverishly digging tunnels all along the DMZ with dreams of all the tourism dollars they would rake in and plans for how they could paint the Noble North as a bunch of stupid tunnel-digging communist hillbillies. I became suspicious.

At the end of the tunnel, there was a fake roll of barbed wire and a tiny metal door. No pictures, it said. No pictures and don't come in here. Maybe we weren't allowed to bring cameras because they didn't want us to ruin the 'surprise'. After tiredly and disappointedly speculating what was behind the door (a soju bar?), we turned and went all the way back up the tunnel, hard hats colliding with rock ceiling in a symphony of defeatism.

It was a pretty lame tunnel and, strictly for revenge purposes, if you are some kind of spy and want schematics of the tunnel, please email me and I will do my best to help you destroy it.

Next we were off to the Dora Observatory. The windy road up the mountain was impossibly steep, but our nimble bus clung to the road. We were treated to passing glances at barriers painted up to look like Kung-Fu Tigers and Mortar Blasting Tigers and Rifle Tigers. At the top, we took a group picture for Memory's sake and filed into a large conference room where a Korean soldier delivered a memorized speech in monotone English. Outside, in the cutting wind, you could pay 500 won for about fifteen seconds of telescope time. You could also take pictures from behind a painted yellow line which was situated far enough from the observatory wall that any photos you took couldn't possibly show any part of North Korea. It was a masterful scheme. If you want to see North Korea, it seemed to say, you need to pay and actually come here. Pictures aren't going to do it for you.

Well, fuck that, I said. I'm tall and therefore advantaged (in the same way I was disadvantaged in the tunnel). Off in the distance in this photo, you can actually see the nearest edge of North Korea along with a gigantic white flag proclaiming Southern domain. North Korea had a similarly gigantic flag, and a big metal statue of Dictator Kim which was impossible to locate and identify.

At one time, Jen and Chad stood before a scenic backdrop of commie mountains.

Mike tried to disobey The Rules and take some covert pictures from up on the wall, but wariness of patrolling soldiers ensured that they all featured Mike's hand more than North Korea.

Our final stop was Dorasan Train Station, which is the northernmost station in South Korean domain. It's a showpiece, basically, as no passengers ever come through. Remember all that stuff I said about the trains not running? It was real.

Of course, there were plenty of photo-ops with the poor soldiers assigned to guard this forsaken place. This particular armyman was quite adverse to being hugged or touched, which was unfortunate because he was clearly so very glib and fun-loving.

How a Train Station Logo is Born.

Yes, that's right: George W. Bush once visited Dorasan to make an impressive speech about democracy and sign some meaningless treatise. This picture hung in the station and George W. was bathed in a holy light, his visage forever immortalized in the complex act of Signing as Korean dignitaries clapped and cheered him on. But... but what is this insolent smirk on Korean President Roh Moo-Hyun's face?

Maybe he's laughing at the fact that George W. is holding the marker upside down. Sweet Jesus, who elected this man?

We bought meaningless train tickets to visit the platform area of the station. Chad and Mike looked to the horizon, to peace and prosperity, to a bright future when trains will once more come screaming down the tracks to immediately hit and kill any pedestrians who stand there.

At the very split of the nation, with glimpses and hopes of reunification all around us, mostly all I could think about was how cold I was. I will forever remember North Korea as a frozen wasteland of communist winter, a harsh blight on the fair face of Southeast Asia. And that's mostly just because I like to carry a grudge, a grudge having something to do with trains and unfinished tunnels and biting winds. I can't really remember the exact parameters of my vendetta, but rest assured that North Korea is an evil, foul place and I think that when I was looking through the Dora telescope for my allotted 15 seconds, I saw a North Korean woman with red eyes biting the head off a kitten. I'm pretty sure.

But perhaps one day these two disparate Koreas will come together again and, in all seriousness, the most powerful thing I took from our DMZ tour was the overarching Korean desire to fit the puzzle pieces back together somehow; to smooth the jagged edges and put an end to the suspicion and fear. It felt like a familial longing, a lovers' spat, an overwhelming urge to walk past the ideological differences and hateful spit of leaders and, bonded once more in cultural history, mercilessly fleece the wallets of stupid foreign tourists. Together.

It is a beautiful dream.