Cold War Still Hot in Korea’s DMZ

In his 28 years on the surreal front line that divides the belligerent Koreas, translator C.S. Cho has heard it only twice before.

Sweet North Korean songs are pouring from the giant loudspeakers that normally blast high-pitched propaganda.

It’s a welcome change from the usual diet of martial music and tirades about imperialist American occupiers and their South Korean running dogs. But veterans of the demilitarized zone, or DMZ, which President Clinton once agreed was “the scariest place on Earth,” have been well trained not to indulge in hope.

“It’s phenomenal,” said Cho, who serves in the United Nations duty officer command post just a few feet from the dividing line staffed by scowling North Korean sentries. “I don’t know if after this summit this phenomenon of sweet music will continue.”

American and U.N. forces plan to keep a low profile during the historic summit, scheduled to begin Tuesday when South Korean President Kim Dae Jung is to fly to Pyongyang, the North’s capital, for three days of meetings with North Korean leader Kim Jong Il. It is the first meeting between leaders of the rival Koreas since the Korean War began June 25, 1950, with a surprise attack by the Communist North.

The summit had been set for Monday but was postponed for one day for “unavoidable technical reasons” at North Korea’s request, a South Korean presidential spokesman announced today.

Not one South Korean or American, officer or grunt, interviewed along the DMZ last week expected the summit to bring immediate change along the 150-mile-long, 2 1/2-mile-wide strip where the Cold War can still flash hot without warning.

“We’ve seen a kinder, gentler North Korea so far this year,” said U.S. Lt. Col. Stephen M. Tharp, a Korea specialist who is assistant secretary of the U.N. Command. “They need to keep that nice behavior up for a while before I’ll believe it. But maybe they have decided to join the international community,” Tharp said, knocking on a wooden table.

The two nations’ massive armies still are going about business as usual--except for the Korean War veterans, hordes of tourists and media who have been flooding the area in recent weeks.

In Panmunjom, the U.N.-administered meeting point in the center of the DMZ, a flock of Chinese tourists climbed atop the North Koreans’ building last week to stare across at Westerners gaping back at them from the South Korean side. Several Chinese waved. Tourists on the southern side are not allowed to wear jeans, lest such casual wear be interpreted as sloth by the North Koreans. Visitors are warned not to wave back, speak to the North Korean soldiers or make any moves that could be interpreted as provocative.

Though the idea of military reductions by the two Koreas still seems farfetched to most observers, a reduction in tensions no longer seems unattainable--if the summit goes well.

A 40-Minute Drive Into Unreal World

Down in the South Korean capital, Seoul, only 25 miles away, hopes are soaring. Ordinary people pray for a summit agreement to allow reunions of some of the hundreds of thousands of families sundered by the war. Optimists talk of a first step down the long road to reunification.

As dreams of peace make their way to Seoul’s Hyundai-clogged streets and gleaming skyscrapers, it is easy to forget the fearful threat posed by North Korea, despite the subway posters warning citizens to report suspected spies. The 40-minute trip up the five-lane highway to the DMZ, past the double barbed-wire fences aimed at keeping infiltrators from swimming up the mined Imjin River and past the floodlighted guard posts and huge cement slabs that can be dynamited to stop tanks, is a sobering experience.

Though North Korea’s economy is a shambles, its capacity to level Seoul is undiminished. About 700,000 of North Korea’s army of more than a million are garrisoned within 62 miles of the DMZ, with 8,000 artillery systems and 2,000 tanks. Much of the force is bunkered underground for protection, Gen. Thomas A. Schwartz told Congress in March.

Without moving a piece of artillery, the North could keep up a barrage of 500,000 artillery rounds an hour aimed at Seoul for several hours, Schwartz said.

Though the North has agreed to a moratorium on testing its Taepodong 1 long-range missile, which it fired over Japan in August 1998, the regime has a large arsenal of short-range missiles that could deliver its 5,000 metric tons of chemical weapons.

“In the last 12 months, North Korea has done more to arrest a decline in readiness and to improve its military capability than in the last five years combined,” Schwartz testified. That includes deploying long-range rocket launchers to hardened sites near the DMZ, putting antitank barriers in forward positions, repositioning key units, building missile support facilities, preparing for extended-range missile testing, and procurement of fighter aircraft, he said.

The United States has 37,000 troops in South Korea, but the south side of the DMZ is now almost entirely patrolled by South Korea, which spends more than $9 billion a year on defense and has an armed force of 690,000. Much of that force also is arrayed near the DMZ, though troop deployments are a military secret.

“Don’t think of it as a heavily armed border--think of it as a fighting zone waiting for the attack to be launched,” said Karl Swanson, staff historian for the U.S. Forces Korea.

In the last months of World War II, two U.S. Army officers drew up a plan to divide Korea at the 38th parallel and ask the Soviet Union, whose forces had already pushed down to Seoul, to withdraw north of the line.

The meeting took only 30 minutes, Swanson said, adding, “The legend is the only map they had was the National Geographic map of Korea.” To the U.S. surprise, the Soviets agreed. But the arbitrary line made no allowances for terrain and would later give the northern forces a huge advantage.

Zone Is Result of War That Killed 2 Million

When North Korea attacked on the rainy morning of June 25, 1950, about half the South Korean army officers were on leave. Neither South Korean nor U.S. forces were properly trained. The United States was gripped by demobilization fever, and it was determined to deny South Korean President Syngman Rhee the means to attack the North.

The southern army, a ragtag force of about 65,000, had no tanks, puny artillery and no qualified pilots for the 10 F-51 fighter planes the U.S. had given them, Swanson said. The North Korean People’s Army of 135,000 veterans of the Soviet and Red Chinese armies, had 150 T-34 tanks and long-range artillery.

Seoul fell in three days.

The Rhee government evacuated south to Pusan but broadcast assurances that the northern attack was being repelled. As the southern army beat a hasty retreat, it blew up a bridge over the Han River jammed with fleeing civilians.

The three-year war left 2 million dead, including more than 36,000 American soldiers.

The DMZ was never meant to be a permanent fixture. The truce that ended the war in 1953 was expected to be replaced within months by a peace treaty, but talks over how to hold talks continue today.

About 75 U.N. Command soldiers have been killed along the DMZ, the last one a South Korean in 1995. In a 1976 incident, North Korean soldiers crossed the military demarcation line and attacked U.N. soldiers who were trimming a poplar tree that was obstructing their view of a guard post. Two Americans were killed with axes they were using to trim the tree. The North Koreans came as close as they ever have to an apology.

Many scholars believe that Kim Jong Il, the current leader who was already in charge of the North Korean army, ordered the attack. “It is almost certain he did,” Swanson said. “We were really close to going to war over that.” Kim Il Sung, the North Korean founder, is believed to have reprimanded his son over the incident.

Village Residents Fear Being Kidnapped

Inside the zone, soldiers continue to patrol their respective sides of the line. The 240 South Korean residents of Tae Song Dong village, located inside the DMZ, tend their fields of rice, ginseng and red peppers under guard. Fearful of being abducted and then claimed as defectors by the North, they lock themselves in their homes at 11 each night.

Outsiders are barred from Tae Song Dong, but village chief Chon Chang Kwon, interviewed by telephone, said the villagers have not lowered their guard. About two weeks ago, the farmers quit work in the fields and went home after North Korean soldiers pointed their rifles at them, he said.

“We don’t pay much attention, because we are immune to it, but I notice that there is very little broadcasting from the North Korean side these days,” Chon said.

There is speculation that North Korea’s severe electricity shortages, as well as the upcoming summit, may be behind the silent loudspeakers. They used to broadcast six to 12 hours a night but sometimes now play for only two hours.

Chon said the villagers hope that the summit will allow some of the elderly who have family in the North to exchange visits. “For us, who look at the North every day and cannot go, this hope is very urgent,” he said. “They are getting old and dying.”

Despite North Korea’s chronic hunger, the soldiers along the DMZ do not look undernourished, though some are small, said South Korean 1st Lt. Tong Hoon Kang.

But there are signs that military discipline is slipping, judging from reports from the eastern end of the DMZ, where northern soldiers have been spotted wearing T-shirts instead of uniforms, lying down on duty, and fishing.

A Race to Build Biggest Flagpole

The DMZ propaganda war is by no means over. The struggle ranges from deadly to ludicrous. There was, for example, the flagpole fight, which began when South Korea gave Tae Song Dong village a flagpole higher than that in the northern village of Gi Jong Dong. North Korea responded by building a 480-foot flagpole that it claims is the tallest in the world and has a 93-foot-long flag that weighs 600 pounds.

Huge slogans are posted in the hills of each side. “Follow the path of the leading star [Kim Jong Il],” says one of the North’s. Back in the 1980s, the South mounted the slogan “We serve only three years in the army,” a dig at the nine- to 15-year North Korean military conscription. Southern strategists later concluded that the sign would not have the desired effect as North Korean soldiers tend to be better-fed than civilians.

When the 550 troops of the U.N. Command want to unwind, they can play golf at what is proudly proclaimed as “The World’s Most Dangerous Golf Course.” It is a one-hole course surrounded on three sides by minefields, located at Camp Bonifas, the U.N. camp named for one of the officers killed in the ax murders.

Last week, the loudest sounds heard inside the DMZ were the cries of exuberant birds who nest in the lush foliage and pristine wetlands that have lain untrammeled by humans for nearly 50 years.

The hills on the North Korean side are bare of trees, sacrificed to military imperative or for fuel. But inside the DMZ and in areas to the south where civilian access is restricted, rare species of plants, insects, snakes, fish and endangered wildlife roam freely. There are rare cranes and white-tailed sea eagles, herons, geese and swans, hawk owls and frogs, wild pigs and black bears, and even the prized swiri fish, which only thrives in the purest water and has otherwise disappeared from South Korea.

Given the spread of urbanization from sprawling Seoul and the destruction of many southern wetlands, some preservationists want parts of the DMZ to remain off limits forever. But a team of southern environmentalists hopes eventually to turn the DMZ into a nature haven, with a peace park, a research center and carefully controlled eco-tourism.

“I think the DMZ belongs not only to the Korean people but also to the people of the global village,” said Kim Kwi Gon, a professor of environmental planning at Seoul National University, who spearheaded the first environmental assessment of a portion of the DMZ near Seoul. “It’s a global natural asset.”

A new generation of South Koreans who will inherit this legacy was sizing up the DMZ last week. Throngs of schoolchildren and a troupe of kindergartners tromped up to a South Korean observation post to get their first view of the North.

“I hope unification will come soon because our country is divided into two,” said Byon Hyun Jun, 12. “My friends say they are not afraid of North Koreans, but I am scared because they have guns and bayonets.”

One of his classmates promptly called him “sissy” but then confessed that, when he grows up, he doesn’t want to serve on the DMZ either, because he is an ice skater and there isn’t a rink.

The other sixth-graders, dressed in burgundy sailor suit uniforms, all agreed that unification should come soon. Asked what South Korea should do to make it happen, ponytailed Yang Hee Soo did not hesitate.

“We must pray,” she said.

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Korean DMZ: The Last Cold War Frontier

The demilitarized zone that divides North and South Korea is one of the last remaining hot spots of the Cold War. More than a million heavily armed soldiers and minefields, artillery and barbed wire surround the zone. Inside, the DMZ has become a treasure of flourishing wildlife where humans are absent.

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* MILITARY: About 70% of North Korea’s 1.15-million-man army is believed to be stationed within 62 miles of the DMZ. Most of South Korea’s 690,000 troops also are stationed near the DMZ. The U.S. has 37,000 troops in South Korea. The U.N. command administers a 1953 armistice.

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* GEOGRAPHY: The 150-mile-long, 2.5-mile-wide DMZ is bisected by the Military Demarcation Line (MDL). No fortifications are allowed in the DMZ. The MDL is marked by 1,292 rusting yellow-and-black markers spaced every 110 to 220 yards. South-facing signs are written in Korean and English; north-facing signs in Korean and Chinese.

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* VILLAGES: Tae Song Dong (also known as Freedom Village) is occupied by 240 South Koreans. They pay no taxes and are exempt from military service, but they have an 11 p.m. curfew. Only those living in the village before the Korean War or their descendants are eligible for residency. Villagers grow rice, ginseng and red peppers.

North Korean village is Gi Jong Dong, dubbed “Propaganda Village” by the South because loudspeakers blast Communist slogans. There are 13 households, but inhabitants are rarely seen. Many buildings have no windows.

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* FORTIFICATIONS AND TUNNELS: The southern approach to the DMZ is protected by minefields and barbed-wire fences. Patrolled by South Korean forces. Late North Korean leader Kim Il Sung is believed to have ordered front-line units to dig tunnels under the DMZ for infiltrators. Four tunnels have been found; others are believed to exist.

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Sources: U.N. Command, U.S. Forces Korea, CIA Yearbook, South Korean Ministry of Defense