Surreal glimpse of the impossible state

Since returning from Korea I've been reading The Impossible State by Victor Cha, in which he discusses the weirdness of the North Korean state, and the extraordinariness of its continued existence. I didn't visit North Korea proper, but I got my own little glimpse of it, via my 'Impossible Tour', which is how I think of my organised day trip tour to the Demilitarized Zone and the Joint Security Area (Panmunjom). It was the highlight of my Korean visit, and a totally surreal business.

I booked with Panmunjom Travel Centre a few days in advance. They need your booking and passport details at least two days in advance, presumably to check you out. I was picked up from my hotel and put on a big bus with about 40 other intrepid tourists. On this particular day there were two guides for the two main groups: English speaker Gina and a Japanese speaker for the Japanese contingent. Gina told me they often have a Chinese group too, but it's always only English and Japanese, or English and Chinese on the bus together, because if they put Japanese and Chinese together, they fight!

We went first to the Mt Odu Unification Observatory, where we were able to peer across the border into North Korea. We saw a school and a few (perhaps artificially well constructed) villages. Sometimes you get to see workers in the fields, we were told. There was the screening of a very heavy handed propaganda film about the awfulness of North Korea and its ruling dynasty, a mock-up of the high speed train that they hoped would one day run from Seoul via Pyongyang to Paris, and a typical North Korean schoolroom. Sat at our school desks we were introduced to a genuine North Korean defector, who answered our questions about life in the north and how and why she had defected. The final straw, she said, was when the government launched a currency exchange (a 100-fold revaluation) which wiped out everyone's savings. So the ten years she had spent building up her business had been wasted. She also had no means of buying more stock to continue the business. She had decided she had nothing to lose.

On then to a lunch stop, followed by Imjingak Park, to see various sites and memorials about the Korean War. And then it was on to the main course: the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) and the Joint Security Area (JSA).

The DMZ is a 4km wide ribbon along the border. Before driving into it we were transfered onto a military bus at Camp Bonifas, and put under the direction of a UN Military Armistice Commission officer (on this occasion a relaxed and friendly US Army Private with whom Gina enjoyed playful banter about his shopping and cooking habits). 

Gina had made us sign waivers about our 'entrance into a hostile area and the possibility of  injury or death as a result of enemy action'. We had to wear 'appropriate civilian attire so as to maintain the dignity of the United Nations Command'. Gina said that the North Koreans would be filming us, and poorly dressed visitors were sometimes used in propaganda films about how the West cannot afford to clothe its people properly. We were not to 'point, make gestures, or expressions like scoffing, abnormal action which could be used by the North Korean side as propaganda', or which indeed could start a fight and an international crisis.

The JSA is a small block of land, which straddles the precise border in the middle of the DMZ, and to which people from both sides have equal access. There are three UN-blue painted huts, the middle one of which we were led into. There is no communication between North and South, so it's strictly first come, first served, re access in practice. If a group from the North happened to be in there, we weren't going to try to join them, to be on the safe side. On this occasion though, it was the second anniversary of the death of Kim Jong Il, so all the North Koreans would be attending their solemn ceremonies, and there was little chance of meeting them.

In the hut, which has been used at times for discussions between the sides, we were encouraged to move about the room, including the North Korean end (so I've actually been several metres into North Korean territory), and to photograph the stationary wax dummy like elite South Korean soldiers who were there to guard us. They stood in their 'modified taekwondo' poses, ready for any action. We were advised not to touch them or walk behind them, in case we were injured by a reflex martial arts move. Gina had told us that every South Korean mother wants her daughter to marry one of these warriors.

A few metres to the north of these huts was the North Korean building. A sole North Korean soldier was standing to attention, watching us, binoculars at the ready. But close inspection revealed lots of gaps in the curtains, even another set of binoculars trained on us. 

As we drove back to Camp Bonifas we passed the memorial marker where the 1976 axe murder incident took place. Two American soldiers were pruning a tree which had grown up to obscure the view between two UN observation posts. Suddenly a group of their North Korean counterparts attacked them and, using the Americans' own axe, hacked them to death. One of the Americans was Captain Arthur Bonifas.

Over the years there have been lots of scary incidents at the border - fights, scuffles, murders, defections, and arguments. The South Korean soldiers wear dark glasses to minimise the chance of eye contact with their counterparts, and this has reduced the number of incidents. The tension, as they say, is palpable. So why do they risk more such incidents with busloads of, maybe ill-disciplined, tourists, some of them perhaps treating it all as just another entertaining day out? I imagine it's because we, the tourists, are a very important part of the show - the propaganda show that is.

The surreal nature of the whole trip was underlined when, back at Camp Bonifas, we were led into the duty free souvenir shop, where we bought DMZ T-shirts and North Korean brandy!