Korea – They call it the most dangerous place on Earth – and yet it’s a tourist attraction. Welcome to Panmunjom, home of the Joint Security Area in the Demilitarised Zone (DMZ) that cuts the Korean peninsula in two and has done so since 1953. The DMZ is 250km long and four kilometres wide, but here in Panmunjom there is no boundary, only a concrete slab buried in the ground about halfway down the length of each of the bright blue prefab buildings.
On either side are imposing multiple-storey buildings. On the North Korean (or Democratic People’s Republic of Korea) side, it’s called Panmungak and looks squarely onto the Freedom House Pagoda in the Republic of Korea (or South Korean) side.
Standing vigil are five Republic of Korea Army soldiers, clad in old-style US army helmets, pilot sunglasses and serious attitudes. They stand in a tae-kwon do pose, pistols holstered at their sides, glaring at the sole Korea People’s Army soldier, looking like a Soviet-era cast-off, standing forlornly next to the pillars above the steps of Panmungak.
It’s frightening – and hysterical – all at once. The air of surreality is compounded by the presence of a souvenir shop at the JSA visitors’ centre a couple of hundred metres to the south.
The JSA used to be exactly that – a joint area where soldiers of the last remnants of the Cold War could interact under the watchful gaze of international monitors, but a series of brutal beatings, defections and even the slaying of two US Army officers in the 1970s put paid to all that.
Our guide, a young ROKA conscript sergeant, warns us to take our name tags off, take our lenses out of our camera bags and leave the bags in the bus. The KPA troops will be watching our every move, he tells us, and we dare not provoke them.
It’s melodramatic, slightly toned down from the old days when tourists would be asked to sign a waiver acknowledging they were entering a deadly dangerous area and could die, but still very real as we head off in an army bus to Checkpoint 3, which overlooks the “Bridge of No Return” and the stump of the tree whose felling led to two dead US officers and sparked one of the most intense Cold War spikes as the US went to Defcon 3 across the whole world while their soldiers mounted a full-on military operation to cut it down.
You can stand on the viewing deck and look out at North Korea as ROKA troops, this time in full combat gear, body armour and assault rifles, stand within convenient range for the obligatory selfies.
Chuck in the cartoon dictator, who looks like he’s just walked off the set of an Austin Powers’ spoof, and it is truly deeply surreal.
But it isn’t. The tension is very real. Away from the tourists, the ROKA soldiers conduct manoeuvres alongside the DMZ, as across the border the North Koreans threaten to conduct more nuclear tests. The DMZ is rumoured to be the most heavily mined area in the world.
Well within artillery range to the south, lies South Korea’s capital, Seoul – a city that is at once custodian of a 3½ millennia old culture cradled within a city that is brand new, skyscraper office blocks giving way to equally tall apartment buildings on either side of the Han River, stretching away as far as the eye can see.
In the CBD, you’ll come across the Korea you already know, the corporate head offices of manufacturing giants LG, Hyundai and Samsung, with its D’Light store showcasing the latest advances and selling some of them too (although the same items are cheaper in Joburg). The Gangnam district, home of Psy, the K-Pop phenomenon and that chubby little lad that the world started mocking before dancing to him and his eponymous “Gangnam Style”.
There are pubs aplenty, for the Koreans are incredibly sociable; craft beer houses interspersed with genuine Korean restaurants with ubiquitous soju or Korean rice spirit that is often drunk, not as a chaser but as a beer mix and the usual fast food joints hawking everything from pizzas to burgers and fried chicken.
Seoul is a city that never seems to sleep. There are 10 million people living there and another 12½ million in Incheon, the satellite city to the west that now hosts Incheon International Airport the main gateway to the country, but the overwhelming feeling is of calm. Traffic often gridlocks, horrifically by Joburg standards, but no one is getting out of their car with baseball bats or sitting on their hooters.
There are bus routes on the highways that only buses use (another the bizarre phenomenon for Joburgers), but the real alternative is the seamless integrated public transport system that incorporates the underground railway, the buses and the orange Hyundai Sonata taxis, all of which take one pre-charged card.
Seoul is impressive for many reasons. For one, its phoenix-like emergence from the ravages of the Korean War. After the armistice was signed in 1953, the whole of South Korea was in ruins, the children were starving, there were no natural resources to speak of, only its people. Today it’s the eighth biggest economy in the world – and it’s still in the grip of a very real civil war.
In downtown Seoul, there’s a piece of the old Berlin wall that once separated West from East Germany, a silent reminder that Korea remains the last bastion of the cold War.
In Incheon, the talk is of boosting tourism through a world-first, a medical theme park, getting the entire family to enjoy themselves while you have your tumours dealt with. For the older Americans, there’s even battlefield tourism thrown in, reliving old triumphs while having the associated aches and pains of old age attended to.
It’s a country and a culture that’s a riddle to many, but it’s an example of what can be achieved in spite of the most incredible adversity.
Monument honours SA war contribution
Not many South Africans go to Korea to visit. None in fact, according to the South African embassy in Seoul, as opposed to the almost 3 000 South Koreans who apply to visit South Africa every month.
Perhaps the difficulty is getting there. There are no direct flights, but a wealth of connecting flights, through Europe or the UAE. In my case, it was SAA to Hong Kong and Cathay Pacific from there to Seoul – a total of 16 hours in the air.
There’s a sizeable South African community in South Korea, though, all studying or teaching. Some take one-year contracts to teach English and fall in love with the country, even marrying locals.
Others go there to study, like Itumeleng Moroenyane, 29, from Meyerton and Casper Claasen, 27, from Potchefstroom. They’re both doing their masters, Moroenyane in microbiology and genetics, Claasen in land reform.
I met them at the South African Airforce memorial in Pyongtaek, 65km south of Seoul. There, with foreign students drawn from each of the countries that took part as part of the UN force to fight the North Koreans in 1950, they were laying a wreath at the imposing 18m-high memorial.
It’s part of the Ministry of Patriotic and Veteran Affairs programme to commemorate not just the war but the efforts by each of the different countries by going to the various memorials.
For both Moroenyane and Claasen, the initiative was both moving and an eye-opener.
Neither had been aware of South Africa’s efforts through 2 Squadron, the legendary SAAF unit which flew 12 405 sorties under American command, first in Mustangs and then in Sabre jets.
By the end of the campaign the squadron had lost 34 pilots, eight had been taken prisoner and 797 medals had been awarded.
To this day, the US Airforce’s 18th Fighter Bomber Wing plays the introductory bars of the South African national anthem during all retreat parades.
Saturday Star