country. The downside is that there is twenty-four-hour military protection, and the village shuts down at nightfall, the residents required to remain in their homes with all their windows and doors locked until morning.
North Korea used to blare out propaganda slogans over speakers in Panmunjeom clearly audible in Daeseong-dong. “This is paradise. Come over so you can have a good meal of rice,” was a common adage. What was conveniently excluded, though, was the warning, “Savour the few grains that you’ll be lucky we feed you, because you’ll shrink to a gaunt bag of bones after working seventeen-hour days in the fields at Hotel Gulag.”
Our bus was stopped briefly at UNC Checkpoint 2, at the entrance to the JSA, my first opportunity since arriving in Seoul in 1995 to stand on the doorstep of North Korea. Fortunately, by the time we debarked in the JSA, the torrent of rain that had been falling was relegated to a light mist. Our protectors accompanying us into the JSA were two strong and intimidating-looking Korean UNC guards — taller and larger than the average ROK soldier — who possessed first-degree black belts in martial arts and basic fluency in English. Good to know that as I was being hauled kicking and screaming by North soldiers toward the dark recesses of their secretive nation, my two bodyguards would helpfully holler, “Don’t worry, we’ll write!’ in grammatically and phonetically perfect English.
The JSA seemed very desolate and peaceful — a square of utilitarian grey concrete about eight hundred metres in diameter. Of course, we weren’t seeing the real DMZ, the lonely 250 kilometres that reached west and east and was guarded by a ten-foot-tall chain link barrier and a roll of coiled barbed-wire above, watchtowers every few hundred metres, floodlights shining into the no-man’s-land, so that if any North commandos attempted a sortie, they would be shot.
In the centre of the square, along the Military Demarcation Line (MDL) that divides the two countries, is a row of seven low barrack-style buildings referred to as Conference Row. Several of the units belong to the North, and several to the UNC. Three are a sky-blue colour. Across in the North, directly behind Conference Row, is the formal white concrete, three-storey “Panmungak,” or Panmun Building. Behind us in the South was the large steel and glass “Freedom House.” There are a total of twenty-four buildings located within the JSA.
What I didn’t know until later was that this sense of tranquility was deceiving. Apparently, hidden in one or more of the surrounding units on both sides of the border are contingents of soldiers with heavy weapons, poised to rush into action if needed. Naumenkof informed us that the highly-trained UNC soldiers could be outfitted in full combat gear within ninety seconds, “which is really fast,” he added.
Such soldiers were forced to scramble into action on November 23, 1984. On that day, a group of Russian students who were attending Kim Il-sung University in Pyongyang, North Korea, had been bused to the JSA for a tour. One student, Andrei Lankov — now a professor at Kookmin University in Seoul — told me later that his classmate, Vasily Matauzik, was standing by Conference Row snapping photos.
Matauzik, twenty-two, suddenly sprinted across the demarcation line into the South, Lankov explained in his Russian-accented English. (This was the Cold War era, and communist-bloc citizens attempting to defect to other countries was not unusual). Immediately, a KPA guard raced after Matauzik. Then all hell broke loose, said Lankov, estimating that a dozen or more KPA guards equipped with Kalashnikov automatic rifles raced out of Panmungak.
Major Wayne A. Kirkbride, who had been assigned to a U.S. infantry battalion near Panmunjeom in 1975 and is the author of DMZ: A Story of the Panmunjom Axe Murder and Panmunjom: Facts about the Korean DMZ, wrote that “twenty to thirty KPA guards opened fire and ran across the MDL in an effort to prevent the defection.” In response, UNC soldiers bolted out from their unit carrying heavy weapons to confront the North soldiers. Ironically, the July 27, 1953 Armistice Agreement stipulated that soldiers in the DMZ should use minimum force and be armed only with non-automatic weapons. Both sides ignore that rule.
“For twenty minutes bullets were flying everywhere,” recalled Lankov, who had dashed into Panmungak to escape the hail of gunfire.
The battle resulted in one ROK and three KPA soldiers dead and five others injured. Matauzik made it safely across the line, though Lankov referred to him as a “spoiled brat” who was responsible for four deaths.
* * *
Our tour group members stood next to the Military Armistice Commission (MAC) building on Conference Row. Between 1953 and 1976 more than four hundred meetings took place between the North and South in this building. During these powwows, greetings and handshakes were rarely exchanged. In fact, North brass would sometimes go all out to unnerve their counterparts, including making wild accusations and showing deaf indifference to logic. They would distort the truth and insist on outrageous demands, sometimes repeating the words “U.S. Imperial aggressor” up to three hundred times in a single encounter, wrote Kirkbride.
Facing us across the demarcation line just fourteen metres away was a KPA guard with a short, slight frame inside his brown-green uniform and sporting a Soviet-style wide-brimmed hat. It seemed as if a stiff gust of wind would have blown him away. The Korean UNC guard on our side stood ramrod straight, his feet apart, arms out by his side, as if he were about to draw his gun in an American Wild West shootout. He wore a helmet and a pistol holder on his waist, his muscular chest and biceps evident through his tight-fitting short-sleeve shirt.
While the physical stature of the American and ROK soldiers in the JSA can intimidate the smaller North guards, the latter have been known to compensate by massing against a lone soldier, or psyching themselves up into an unnerving mental and emotional fervour. UNC soldiers are trained to not react to these minor provocations. This show of physique by the UNC was just that — a show. It was our boys who were intimidated by the “war faces” of the KPA guards and their unrelenting, unflinching, and unnerving glares that locked in like lasers to the eyes of the UN guards. These were cold, hard, barely suppressed stares of hatred. Our boys wore reflector sunglasses. The sunglasses gave them some refuge from those baleful glares.
Located in Sinchon County, North Korea, southwest of Pyongyang, is the Sinchon Museum of American War Atrocities, which remembers the deaths of about 35,000 North civilians, who the North accused the U.S military of torturing and executing during the latter’s occupation of the country from October to December 1950 (the U.S. vehemently denies any involvement). And the North hasn’t forgotten that U.S. planes dropped 635,000 tons of bombs — including 32,557 tons of napalm — on it during the war.
That KPA soldier across from me had no way of knowing, of course, that I was not an American, his arch enemy. He would not know I was Canadian — a good guy, neutral, who wouldn’t hurt a flea.
The MAC building is long and spartan, with windows running the length of the room. In the centre along the side were long wooden tables and a few chairs. One half of one table was in the South, the other half in the North. Once we were inside, one of our ROK guards positioned himself against the wall, the other by the far door, which opened into North Korea. Stand in the near south side of the room, you are in South Korea; cross over the centre to the far side, you’re in the North. Visit two countries for the price of one. Neat!
“Do not interfere or touch the ROK soldiers,” warned Naumenkof. “They will physically stop you if you cross in front or behind them. Do not go near the door to the North. Two KPA guards are standing outside. There have been incidents where tourists and ROK soldiers have been pulled through the door and brutalized.”
Naumenkof told us that in 2002, U.S. president George W. Bush stood in this room with then South Korean president Kim Dae-jung. Two KPA guards walked in, and one took down the American flag and began polishing his shoes with it, while the other removed the ROK flag and blew his nose on it. Not wanting a future repeat, the South had the silk flags replaced with plastic
