Anxiety eases for DMZ dwellers
Atmosphere between Koreas calmer, quieter
TAESUNG VILLAGE, South Korea – At first glance, this tiny village looks like an ordinary farming community in rural South Korea. Rice fields, tractors and modest homes dot the landscape. There’s a church, an elementary school, even a tiny movie theater.
But life for Taesung’s 207 residents is anything but ordinary. They’re the only people living inside the Demilitarized Zone, the buffer area 160 miles long and 2.5 miles wide that has divided the peninsula since the end of the Korean War in 1953.
South Korean soldiers escort farmers to and from their fields every day to steer them clear of landmines inside the heavily guarded border.
Just 440 yards away is the demarcation line that separates North and South Korea, and beyond that is the North Korean town of Kijong, a seemingly uninhabited “propaganda village” featuring an imposing 525-foothigh flagpole, one of the world’s tallest.
As leaders from Seoul and Pyongyang prepare for Friday’s historic summit, few will watch more closely than the residents of Taesung. Mayor Kim Dong-ku said the recent period of détente between the North and South has made a difference in the village.
“Since we’re so close to North Korea, we feel very nervous when the ten- sions are high,” he said. “Due to the talks, the atmosphere has gotten much better.”
Perhaps the most striking change has been in the noise level. North Korea usually blasts a non-stop stream of propaganda songs and speeches from loudspeakers inside Kijong but agreed to turn off the sonic assault this week before the summit. South Korea stopped playing K-pop tunes, news and information from its own highpowered loudspeakers on the border.
“The propaganda stopped (on Monday),” Kim said. “It’s much more relaxed here now.”
Living under such conditions may seem hard to imagine, but Taesung has its benefits. Farmers are given rights to a 17-acre plot of land per family and typically earn $80,000 to $100,000 a year, far more than the average South Korean farmer.
They don’t pay federal taxes since the village is under United Nations command, and men are exempt from South Korea’s mandatory military service.
Like Mayor Kim, almost all the residents of Taesung — also called Freedom Village — are natives. The only way anyone can move into the town is if a woman marries a local man. Inhabitants are required to spend 240 days a year in Taesung.
Beyond a sporadically open movie theater inside the town hall, there are no shops or businesses inside Taesung. Residents can come and go through the heavily fortified barriers and checkpoints of the DMZ into nearby South Korean towns and cities such as Paju, but a curfew is in effect from midnight until 5 a.m.
At Taesung’s elementary school, which has 35 students from pre-kindergarten to sixth grade, tensions with North Korea seem distant. Colorful student artwork decorates the walls, and children’s laughs and shouts reverberate through the hallways during break times. “The children aren’t afraid,” Principal Jin Young-jin said.