There’s something more than a little crazy about that no-man’s-land that divides Korea says Andrew Farrell
Michael Palin once described the Demilitarized Zone, the 4km-wide no man’s land running along the 38th parallel that separates Koreas South and North, as a place “devoid of common sense”, concluding that ongoing peace negotiations in Panmunjom, the town inside the DMZ, must be among the most ineffectual on the planet.
Palin, like most of us, probably remains perplexed that some 14 years on from his visit for the TV series Full Circle, the relationship remains between the Koreas remains tense, with no immediate sign of a breakthrough.
It’s about 12 months since my first visit to the DMZ. Back then, the young soldiers were still coming to terms with the news of the sinking of the Cheonan, South Korea’s naval ship, which was apparently torpedoed by the North, resulting in the loss of 46 seamen. This time, memories are still fresh of the shelling of Yeongpyeong Island in late November.
This 217km-long frontier, which qualifies as the world’s most heavily fortified border, reaches from the Yellow Sea to the Sea of Japan and effectively turns South Korea into an island off the Asian continent.
The peculiar thing about the DMZ is that even among the tension, there remains a vibrant tourist industry – albeit one temporally shut down after the attack on Yeongpyeong. As western and Japanese tourists mill about snapping photos and buying overpriced merchandise, Southern soldiers stand guard with clenched fists, wearing sunglasses to ensure an ‘eye war’ doesn’t break out. Regular warnings are dished out about being shot if you wave or point in the direction of a North Korean soldier.
Listening to veterans of the unofficial second Korean War from 1966 to 1969, when a series of conflicts almost turned the Cold War into a third world war, it’s easy to understand their bemusement at the sight of tourists herded into the same UN buildings that saw hours and hours of ultimately fruitless treaty negotiations. These men and women, decades previously, witnessed crossfire shootings and regular acts of violence in the same spot where we posed for pictures last week.
What they would have thought of the latest phenomenon to emerge from the DMZ is another matter altogether. There is a brand of bottled water that comes from what the South Koreans believe to be the best ecosystem in the world. The theory goes that the DMZ has not been interfered with by mankind for 50 years, therefore it is marketable as clean and fresh.
A TV advert last spring showed a computer-generated image of a deer and a fawn sipping water from a stream as the sun dominated the great, big blue sky above. All around the drinking animals, birds sang in the trees and flowers blossomed in the warm summer’s day.
Why the people responsible for this brand of bottled water (which, naturally, tastes no different from anything else you find on the shelves) felt it was appropriate to replace the DMZ’s image of separation, violence and sadness with tranquillity and peace is bewildering, to say the least.
It’s tempting to conclude that this sort of commercialism can only reign supreme in Korea, given that I’ve not yet heard of Japan selling Hiroshima biscuits or Cambodia some Khmer Rouge dessert treats, but perhaps this situation is not unique to the land of the morning calm.
Michael Palin wondered aloud about the sense of normality in the DMZ. With bottled water and busloads of tourists, is it any wonder?
Andrew Farrell worked as an English language teacher in Korea.
