Photographer Chang W. Lee made a number of journeys to and alongside the Korean Demilitarized Zone to {photograph} this story.
Seen from the sky, the Demilitarized Zone, or DMZ, appears like a big geographical wound throughout the Korean Peninsula, the continual wire fences snaking up the hills and down the valleys from coast to coast.
It was created 70 years in the past on Thursday, when an armistice was signed by the American-led United Nations Command and the North Korean and Chinese militaries on the “truce village” of Panmunjom, placing an finish to the combating, however not the Korean War itself.
The DMZ was meant to be a brief buffer zone, dividing a warring nation. Instead, it has hardened into the world’s most closely armed frontier, embodying not solely an unfinished army confrontation but in addition what little hope stays for peace and reunification between the 2 Koreas.
Along this 155-mile stretch, troopers stand prepared to interact on both facet. Families address a long time of separation. Tourists come to witness dwelling historical past. And goals of reconciliation have slowly light into the space.
Over the final seven a long time, there have been makes an attempt to breach the divide created by the DMZ, re-linking roads and railways throughout the border, permitting cross-border commerce and funding and organizing reunions of separated households.
Such efforts have all ultimately didn’t create lasting peace, crumbling within the face of an unresolved battle.
Despite its identify, the DMZ and its neighborhood are armed to the tooth.
An estimated two million land mines are strewn inside the two.5-mile-wide zone. Its northern and southern perimeters are sealed by layers of razor-wire fences bolstered with booby traps or digital sensors. Armed guards monitor the fences at each 100 to 200 yards.
Every 10 yards alongside the South Korean fences are Claymore anti-personnel mines. All roads main out of the DMZ are guarded by anti-tank obstacles. Behind them, two million troops stand prepared for battle.
Soon after the armistice was signed, POWs have been exchanged at Panmunjom. But the border has since been sealed tight, with the army standoff between North and South Korea reaching ominous new heights in recent times.
Enduring Wounds
If combating have been to recommence on the Korean Peninsula, North Korea stated in June, it will “rapidly expand into a world war and a thermonuclear war unprecedented in the world.”
For Yoon Cheong-ja, 80, the combating by no means ended.
Her son, Senior Chief Petty Officer Min Pyeong-gi, was among the many 46 sailors killed when the South Korean navy ship Cheonan exploded in what the South stated was an unprovoked North Korean torpedo assault in 2010.
“When my son died, my heart was torn into a thousand pieces,” stated Ms. Yoon, who just lately visited the western border waters the place her son died. “No mother should lose her son like I did.”
War-separated households make annual pilgrimages close to the DMZ, the closest they’ll come to their long-lost homeland.
During main holidays, they carry out Confucian household rituals, putting rice, fruit and dried fish on an altar and bowing towards their ancestors’ graves within the North.
“When I die in the South, my children will lose the ties to their roots in the North,” stated Hwang Bong-suk, 87, as she gazed at migrating birds flying over the DMZ on a current afternoon.
Her widowed mom took her North Korean household to the South in 1948, three years after Korea was liberated from Japanese colonial rule and divided into the pro-Soviet North and the pro-American South.
The household traveled in two teams to keep away from suspicion. Ms. Hwang was 12 years previous on the time. Her two older sisters stayed within the North.
They by no means made it to the South.
Their mom saved items for them, hoping to sooner or later be reunited.
During a current boat experience to western border waters from which he might see North Korea by means of a day haze, Choi Jong-dae, 87, remembered his homeland. “The older I get, the more I miss my hometown and my siblings in the North,” he stated.
“I have been to Russia, Mongolia, New York and South Africa,” added Mr. Choi, his voice shaking. “But I can’t visit my hometown, even though it’s so close it feels as if I could stretch my arm to touch it.”
On the opposite facet of the border, households within the North have had to deal with more moderen separations.
Over the postwar a long time, a rating of North Koreans, largely troopers, have defected to the South by means of the DMZ, usually leaving their households behind.
One of them, Ahn Chan-il, slipped by means of a North Korean fence whereas its high-voltage electrical energy was turned off. “Because of what I did, my family in the North was sent to a prison camp and is presumed dead,” stated Mr. Ahn, who arrived within the South in 1979. “As long as I live, I won’t be able to forget them.”
Kim Gang-yu, 27, one other North Korean soldier, fled by means of the DMZ in 2016.
At evening, whereas their nation fell into darkness for lack of electrical energy, North Korean border guards marveled on the blazing electrical lights that lit up the South Korean border fences, Mr. Kim stated.
“I realized I had finally made it to the South when its soldiers let me take a shower,” he stated. “It was my first hot-water shower in years.”
Life Near the Zone
Though the DMZ is called a desolate, unforgiving place, hardy folks have settled close by — and even inside — the zone.
They domesticate land below the watchful eyes of border guards regardless of the potential for land mines. When fishing season comes, fishermen enterprise into harmful waters close to the border to catch croakers, blue crabs and octopus whereas warships present safety.
In current years, northern counties of South Korea have develop into unlikely vacationer locations, attracting folks drawn to the historical past of the DMZ.
In a coastal campsite simply exterior the japanese DMZ, households pitch tents solely yards away from wire fences and army indicators ask campers to report “suspicious persons, objects and vessels.”
A DMZ-themed motel on the campsite has rooms adorned with barbed wire on the wall. Visitors can take pleasure in museums and excursions alongside the border.
“If anything, I can now claim to have spent a night at the farthest north campsite in South Korea,” stated Kim Pil-soo, 42, a current customer. Near his tent was a warning in opposition to “stray land mines.”
Park Jin-woo, 42, took his son, Min-jae, 8, to the DMZ Museum after watching news concerning the conflict in Ukraine. “I wanted to show him that we Koreans also had difficult times and how terrible war can be,” he stated.
Dreams of Reconciliation
On a current sizzling afternoon, 80 folks gathered at a pier close to the western sea border alongside the DMZ. They watched an artist dance with a flag that featured a unified Korean Peninsula.
They later sailed out to waters close to the border whereas a South Korean Coast Guard ship trailed them from a distance.
“We pray for unification!” they chanted, holding their arms collectively. “We pray for peace!”
After almost eight a long time of dwelling separated throughout the tightly sealed border, many South Koreans see reunification as a distant dream. Affinity towards North Koreans has grown weaker amongst youthful generations who have been born a long time after the conflict and haven’t any reminiscence of what it was prefer to dwell in an undivided Korea.
The youth are extra preoccupied with home considerations, like dwindling job alternatives and the rising value of dwelling.
Kim Sang-geun, 69, a retired auto mechanic from Seoul, took his two grandchildren to the DMZ to show them “the pain of the national division,” he stated. One of his kids, Cha-min, 11, stated his faculty associates didn’t need reunification with North Korea “because it would only make us poor.”
Such attitudes make Korean War refugees really feel like a dying breed.
“I once believed that Korea would be reunited by the time I was 50,” stated Ahn Kyong-choon, 88, a conflict refugee from the North who was visiting a border island observatory from which North Korea is seen.
“I now have no such hope left in me.”
Source: www.nytimes.com