SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA – OPTIMISM CAPITOL OF THE UNIVERSE

I have long wanted to visit South Korea.  My father served way down south in Pusan at the tail end of the Korean War during 1953.  He was a military MP.  One of his duties was to guard cathouses situated not far outside the base gates, serving as a conduit to commerce and a shield against sudden strife.  It made for some interesting “What did you do during the war, Daddy?” stories.

That is hardly a magnet for adding a country to an otherwise busy itinerary.  My real attraction to South Korea was the reputation it had earned in less than 30 years as an economic “Asian Tiger,” the sunny disposition of its populace, its natural geographic beauty, and proximity just across the most heavily defended border on the planet to its mysterious and insular brother nation of North Korea.  I wanted to see the Demilitarized Zone.

The primary airport for the South Korean capitol of Seoul is at nearby Incheon Island, about a 50 minute train ride away.  The island became famous as the base of departure for a massive flanking maneuver during the Korean War, from which US and Korean troops and their allies rallied from almost certain defeat in a small pocket at the south end of the country to eventually recapture all of South Korea and then invade North Korea in turn.  More on that later …

Like the infrastructure of most Asian Tigers, the airport is very clean, modern, and efficient.  There is nothing old or dated about it.  All buildings are well lit, bright metallic, polished, and signposted in multiple languages.  Buying opportunities fairly multiply right in front of you.  Staff members are incredibly helpful.  The train into town then hop-scotches over a series of bays, inlets, causeways and islands (and in some portions, proceeds underground) before alighting in Central Seoul.

The first thing I notice is how alive Seoul is.  Not just with activity.  Beijing and Tokyo have activity.  But with zest.  The place oozes with business and busy-ness, prosperity, purpose, optimism, confidence, and has a pulse and buoyancy to it just not found in most major cities.  I think this can be totally credited to the people of South Korea themselves.

These people know who they are.  I attribute this identity solidarity and optimism to a society still based on traditional cultural values, multi-generational connectivity, work ethic, and self-reliance.  This notion of self-reliance is an interesting one, practiced both in both North and South Korea, but in entirely different ways.

There are a number of attractions inside the city.  These include the usual medlay of shopping squares/plazas/strips, farmers’ markets, shrines, temples, palaces, museums, gates, parks, bridges, towers, vistas, pubs, street fairs, restaurants, and sporting arenas  -- including an Olympic Stadium. I will only describe a few.

My favorite by far was the Gyeongbokgung Palace.  During an epic journey where so many presentations of a nation’s history and culture are so badly displayed, explained and illustrated, being able to wander without time limit throughout this shining gem was a definitive treat.  Not only are the grounds massive (they include the palace itself), but they include parade grounds, an endless phalanx of temples, the impeccable Korean Folk Museum, and a changing of the Guard Ceremony – best that I had seen on the journey.

This particular Changing of The Guard ceremony distinguishes itself with its duration, scope, pomp, color (individual soldiers are color coordinated by rank and function), and accoutrements of the participants.  All wear traditional Korean warrior costume, with black wigs, medieval felt black broad-brimmed hats, shaped goatee and mustache, wind-whipped royal flags and banners, and varied weapons.  Their close-order drill is at times similar to watching an American Marching Band at the halftime show of a major football bowl game.

Korea’s first museum, the Imperial Household Museum, was established in 1909 (well before the Korean War dividing North and South). The nucleus of its collection became the incredible National Museum of Korea, with the addition of a collection gathered and administered during Japanese occupation.  During the Korean War 20,000 of the museum's pieces were moved to Pusan to avoid destruction. When the museum returned to Seoul after the war, it was housed in various locations before finding a permanent resting place in its grand new building at Yongsan Family Park in 2005.

The museum contains over 310,000 pieces in its collection with about 15,000 pieces on display at any single time. It displays artifacts in six permanent exhibition galleries such as: Prehistory and Ancient History, Medieval and Early Modern History, Donations, Calligraphy and Painting, Asian Art, and Sculpture and Crafts. It is the sixth largest museum in the world, with 295,551 square meters of floor space. In order to protect the museum artifacts, the primary housing was built to withstand a magnitude 6.0 Richter Scale earthquake.  Display cases are also equipped with shock-absorbent platforms.

On the first floor is the Prehistory and Ancient History Gallery, which contains approximately 4,500 artifacts from the Paleolithic to the modern times excavated from sites across Korea. Relics displayed include chipped stone handaxes to luxurious ancient royal ornaments -- each illustrates portions of the long journey taken by early settlers on the Korean Peninsula towards developing their own unique culture.

The second floor contains the Donation Gallery and Calligraphy and Painting Gallery, which contains 890 pieces of art that showcase the traditional and religious arts of Korea. The third floor contains the Sculpture and Crafts Gallery, with 630 pieces that represent Korean Buddhist sculpture and craftwork. Highlights of the gallery include celadon wares and the much protected National Treasure of Korea.  Also on the third floor is the Asian Arts Gallery, which contains 970 pieces that explore similarities and differences amongst various forms of Asian art, plus the synthesis of Asian and Western art in their intersection along the Silk Road.

A more comfortable visit is to The Folk Museum, established in 1945 by the US Government and opened on its present site adjacent to the Geongbokung Palace in 1993.  It has grown from 4500 artifacts to nearly 98,000.  These exhibits – like the National Palace Museum in Taipei – are arranged in such a way that there is a natural flow to the story of the evolution of the Korean people.

The Folk Museum has three main halls.  History of Korean People features materials of everyday life in Korea from prehistoric times up to 1910.  The Korean Way of Life depicts Korean villagers in ancient times.  Life Cycle of the Koreans demonstrates the deep roots of Confucianism in Korean culture and how this ideology gave rise to most of Korean customs.  The museum also features open-air exhibits, such as replicas of spirit posts where villagers used to pray, stone piles for worship, grinding mills, rice storage shelters and pits for kimchi pots.

Speaking of Kimchi, I could not take my leave of Korea without mentioning Korean food and the national dish of Korea. This was one of the most unexpected delights of my entire journey. The foodstuff is so important that when South Korea offered troops to assist the US and South Vietnamese during the VietNam War, a condition of this would be that fresh kimchi would be available to it combatants at all times.

Kimchi is made up of soup stock, pickled cabbage, radishes, scallions, cucumbers, and red peppers as primary ingredients.  Vegetables and such additives as brine, spices, ginger, garlic, shrimp, fish sauce or beef are often added to the mix.  Traditionally, the mixture is put into large clay pots in the ground to … gestate … for months at a time.  You know you are eating kimchi when your palette experiences something both sweet and sour and you find great satisfaction and a desire to repeatedly stuff yourself.

In addition to repeated servings of the addictive kimchi, my meals in Korea consisted of such offerings as chive pancakes, pork in all its manifestations, steamed vegetable combinations, buckwheat noodles, chamisul (sweet potato wine), sake, and plum wine.

The primary attraction for most foreigners when traveling in South Korea is to visit the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ).  This unique real estate is the most heavily monitored and protected buffer zone on earth.  From the Yellow Sea to the Pacific Ocean, it is 248 kilometers (four kilometers deep, two on each side) of tank traps, coiled rows of barbed wire, minefields, pits, moats, listening posts, observation towers, armored pillboxes, dug-in bunkers, and slit trenches.

The DMZ came about in the aftermath of the Korean War, following independence of both South and North Korea in 1948.  The conflict, which claimed over three million lives and divided the Korean Peninsula along capitalist and communist ideological lines, began with a full-frontal North Korean surprise attack on June 25, 1950 across the 38th parallel.  It ended in 1953 after United Nations entry into the war on behalf of the south pushed the front lines of the war back to its starting point – the original line of separation for Russian and American zones of influence following World War II.

This stretch of Mexican standoff turf straddling that border is meant to preserve the 1953 disengagement – not with a peace agreement, but with a mere armistice or cessation of hostilities accord. This DMZ strip runs at an angle to the 38^th parallel and roughly splits the Korean Peninsula in two.  The approaches to the DMZ from either side could not be more different.

Ironically the South Korean approach is far more difficult.  If a visitor plans to visit the inappropriately named Peace Village of Panmunjeom, they must be vetted three days in advance with an electronic screening.  For those without the luxury of advance planning, a one-day “DMZ light tour” is still available.

This carefully controlled bus tour – with only limited outside walking – offers stops at Freedom Bridge (a former railroad bridge used to repatriate prisoners of war from both sides on their way home in 1953), Dorasan Station, the DMZ Exhibition Hall, Dora observatory (overlook), and a passby of Unification Village.  Frequent stops annoyingly disguised as spontaneous “shopping opportunies” are thrown in to pad the tour.

Dorason Station – the last railway outpost on the southern side of the DMZ -- is a modern but almost completely empty transit point of what was expected in better times to be a hub of south-north commerce, eventually to tie into the Trans Chinese and Trans Siberian railway lines.  It is optimistically shaped in the form of two warmly clasping hands.  Only  busloads of tourists taking a ten-minute stop on their way deeper into the DMZ bother to drop by.

The station is in reality an affirmation from 2002 when it appeared regular social and commercial ties might be re-established between the two alienated member nations of the Korean Peninsula.  As usual, periodic political tensions and “the devil being in the details” thwarted this peace enhancing opportunity.

The rail line passing through, which connects the capitols of Seoul in the south and Pyongyang in the north, was called the Gyeongui Line before division in the 1940s.  It crosses over the border between the two at the Imjin River (currently the South still uses this name, but the North refers to the route as the P'yŏngbu Line). The railway line has been mainly used to carry materials and South Korean workers to the jointly operated Kaesong Industrial Zone north of the border. Passenger traffic is still not allowed.

Another rail line connecting the two Koreas on their eastern seaboard was completed in 2007 when a Korail train crossed the DMZ to the North on a new line called Donghae Bukbu.  The rail crossing was built adjacent to a highway which took South Koreans to Mount Kumgang Tourist Resort, a region that has significant cultural importance for all Koreans. More than one million civilian visitors from the south crossed the DMZ until the route was closed following shooting of a 53-year-old South Korean tourist in July 2008. The South Korea government subsequently suspended tours to the resort. Since then the resort and the Donghae Bukbu Line have effectively been closed by the North.

Panmunjeom itself (famous worldwide as the “Armistice Village” where the cessation of hostilities agreement was signed in 1953 among north and south and their sponsor states) is the site of negotiations that ended the Korean War and is the center of human activity in the DMZ. The village is located on the western Highway One from the south and near the Gyeongui Rail Line connecting the two Koreas.

The road at Panmunjeom was originally the only access point between the two countries. Both North and South Korea's roads end there.  The highways do not quite join as a 20 centimeter concrete divider (called the Military Demarcation Line or MDL) separates the entire village. This MDL indicates exactly where the front lines were when the Armistice Agreement of July 27, 1953 was signed and continues throughout the DMZ.

Large numbers of troops are still stationed along both sides of the line, each side guarding against potential aggression from the other side.  The armistice agreement explains exactly how many military personnel and what kind of weapons are allowed in the DMZ. Soldiers from both sides may patrol inside the area, but they may not cross the MDL.

Sporadic outbreaks of violence due to North Korean initiated hostilities killed over 500 South Korean soldiers and 50 U.S. soldiers along the DMZ between 1953 and 1999.  In all fairness to objectivity, in now declassified documents, U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense William Clements admitted as early as 1976 there had been over 200  incursions into North Korea from the south (though not by the U.S. military). Very few details of these raids have become public, including forays by South Korean forces in 1967 that sabotaged about 50 North Korean facilities.

Though generally calm, the DMZ has been the scene of much similar saber-rattling between the two Koreas over the years. The Axe Murder Incident in August 1976 involved the attempted trimming of a poplar tree which resulted in two deaths (Captain Arthur Bonifas and 1^st Lieutenant Mark Barrett of the US Army).  Prior to this incident, the soldiers of both sides were permitted to go back and forth across the MDL, a privilege since revoked.

Panmunjeom is also the base of the Joint Security Area (JSA), which lies within the village. The original village of Panmunjeom encompassed a larger area than the current military operation of the JSA.  It consisted mostly of farms. The JSA itself is actually about 800 meters south of where the village used to be (Panmunjeom no longer exists as an inhabited village as it was destroyed during the war). It is because of this proximity that there is often ambiguity between the terms JSA or Panmunjeom.

The JSA has been the site of numerous major events since its establishment in 1953, the first of which was the repatriation of prisoners of war (POWs) across the Bridge of No Return – so named because each prisoner was then asked if he wished to cross the river and return to his countrymen or remain with his captors. Once the choice was made there was no turning back.

During this time 13,444 prisoners returned to United Nations Command countries, and 89,493 Korean People’s Army and Chinese People’s Volunteer prisoners returned to their homelands.  Twenty-two Americans elected to remain in North Korea.  Over 23,000 North Korean and Chinese troops elected to stay in South Korea, but most of the Chinese prisoners who made this choice soon emigrated to Taiwan.

The JSA is the location where all inter-Korean negotiations since 1953 have been held, including statements of Korean solidarity, which have generally resulted in little change but a temporary decline of tensions. There are several buildings on both the north and the south side of the MDL -- a few are built right on top of it. The MDL goes through the conference rooms and down the middle of the conference tables where the North Koreans and the United Nations Command (primarily South Koreans and Americans) meet face to face. These buildings are off limits for the single-day DMZ tour.

Since November 15, 1974, the South has discovered that four tunnels crossing the DMZ have been dug by North Korea. This is indicated by the orientation of the blasting marks within each tunnel. Upon discovery, North Korea claimed that the tunnels were for coal mining -- obviously no coal has been found in the tunnels, which are dug through granite, but some of the tunnel walls have been painted black to give the appearance of coal anthracite.  The tunnels also are generally built so that they slope backwards toward North Korea so as not to leak water, which would reveal the tunnels’ location.

The tunnels are believed to have been planned as a surprise military invasion route by North Korea. Each shaft is large enough to permit the passage of an entire infantry division in one hour, though the tunnels are not wide enough for tanks or vehicles. All the tunnels run in a north-south direction and do not have branches. Following each discovery, engineering within the tunnels has become progressively more advanced.

The first of the tunnels was discovered on November 20, 1974, by a South Korean Army patrol, which noticed steam rising from the ground. The tunnel, which was about 1.2 meters high by one meter wide, extended more than 1 kilometer beyond the MDL into South Korea. The tunnel was reinforced with concrete slabs and had electric power and lighting. There were weapon storage and sleeping areas. A narrow gauge railway with carts had also been installed.

The second tunnel was discovered on March 19, 1975. It is of similar length to the first tunnel. It is located between 50 and 160 meters below ground, but is significantly larger than the first.  The third tunnel was discovered on October 17, 1978. Unlike the previous two, this means of bypass was discovered following a tip from a North Korean defector. This tunnel is about 1,600 meters long and about 73 meters below ground.   It is this tunnel we visit while on tour from our Seoul departure point.  It is amazingly well lit, ventilated, and equipped.

A fourth tunnel was discovered on March 3, 1990, north the former Punchbowl battlefield. The tunnel's dimensions are 2 by 2 metres, and it is 145 metres below ground. The method of construction is almost identical in structure to the second and the third tunnels.  Overall, based on studies from ground penetrating radar and reports of deserters, it is believed 17 North Korean tunnels exist somewhere under the MDL.

Both North and South Korea maintain peace villages allowed by the Joint Armistice Committee in sight of each other's side of the DMZ. In the South, Daeseong-dong is administered under the terms of the DMZ. Villagers are classed as Republic of Korea citizens, but are exempt from paying tax and other civic requirements such as military service. Residents of Tae Sung Dong are governed and protected by the United Nations Command and are generally required to spend at least 240 nights per year in the village to maintain their residency. In 2008, the village had a population of 218 people. The villagers of Tae Sung Dong are direct descendants of locals who owned the land there before the Korean War.

In the North, the peace or unification village is called Kijong-dong.  It features a number of brightly painted, poured-concrete multi-story buildings and apartments with electric lighting. These features represented an unheard of level of luxury for rural Koreans (either north or south) when first erected in the 1950s.

The town was oriented so that the bright blue roofs and white sides of the buildings would be the most distinguishing features when viewed from such high ground observation posts as the Dora Observatory on the South Korean side of the DMZ.  On my visit, the South Korean guards would not let us take photos any closer than twenty feet from the overlook rail, claiming that North Koreans in their lookout posts below have taken potshots at tourists upon seeing the reflection of their camera lenses in the sun.

However, my guide takes some delight in pointing out that this complex is really just a show village (a metaphor for most of North Korea, I am to discover later).  Nobody actually lives there.  Srutiny through telescopic lenses reveals that the buildings are mere concrete shells lacking window glass or even interior rooms.  The building lights are turned on and off at set times and the empty sidewalks are swept by a ghost crew of caretakers in an effort to preserve the illusion of habitation and activity.

In the 1980s, the South Korean government built a 98 meter tall flagpole with a 130 kilogram South Korean flag in its peace village of Daeseong-dong.  North Korea  responded by building what was then the tallest flagpole in the world at 160 meters with a 270 kilogram North Korean flag in its ghost village of Kijong-dong – part of a pattern I am able to confirm later in my travels.  Some have amusingly referred to this one-upsmanship skirmish as “the flagpole war.”  Both have been superceded since by the Dushanbe Flagpole in Tajikistan at 165 meters.

The Korean wall is a concrete barrier that was allegedly built along the length of the South Korean side of the DMZ between 1977 and 1979.   It clearly shows up on film and has been referred to by foreign journalists at the prompting of North Korean officials. North Korea contends the wall stretches the length of the DMZ about 8 meters above ground, is 10 to 19 meters thick at the base, and 3 to 7 meters wide at its crest.  It is said to be affixed with wire coils, gunnery embrasures, lookouts and various other military fixations.  The South Koreans and Americans deny there is such a wall, admitting only that there are elaborate tank barriers in some strategic sections of the DMZ.

In the past half century, the Korean DMZ has been too deadly place for humans, making habitation impossible. Only around the village of Panmunjeom and more recently the Dong Bukbu Line on Korea's east coast have there been regular incursions by people.
This natural isolation along the 250 kilometer length of the DMZ has created an unintentional free range wildlife zone which is now recognized as one of the most well-preserved areas of temperate habitat in the world.

Several endangered animal and plant species now exist among the heavily fortified fences, landmines and bunkers of the DMZ. These include the extremely rare red-crowned crane (typically found in Asian art), the white-naped crane as well as the extremely rare Korean tiger, Amur leopard, and Asiatic black bear.  Though it is not known how they managed to navigate its difficulties, scientists have identified some 2,900 plant species, 70 types of mammals and 320 kinds of birds within the narrow buffer zone of the DMZ.



The DMZ owes this biodiversity to its varied geography, which crosses mountains, prairies, swamps, lakes and tidal marshes. Environmentalists hope that the DMZ will be conserved as a wildlife refuge, with an omptimistic if somewhat unrealistic set of objectives and management plans ready to be set in place. In 2005, CNN founder and media magnate Ted Turner, on a visit to North Korea, said that he would financially support any plans to turn the DMZ into a peace park and UN-protected World Heritage Site.