Tensions in Korea hit fever pitch after North’s latest missile test
WITHIN seconds of arriving at the North Korean border, a US Army soldier leaps onto the tour bus and starts barking orders.
“No drugs,” he says, glowering at the group of mainly American tourists. “No alcohol. No weapons of any kind, not even penknives. And do not, under any circumstances, attempt to communicate with the North Korean soldiers you are about to see.” He marches up and down, checking passports, before spinning around to a sea of faces.
“Another thing,” he adds, “and this is not a joke – are any of you considering defecting to North Korea?”
After swiftly answering no, the group is marched single file into the Demilitiarised Zone (DMZ), a twisting snake of barbed wire fences, watchtowers and minefields that bisects the Korean peninsula.
Tensions here have been near boiling point since Kim Jong-un, the North Korean dictator, threatened “imminent” war against the United States.
In the early hours of yesterday morning, Mr Kim test-fired another intercontinental ballistic missile, which exploded shortly after take-off. President Donald Trump, who has repeatedly threatened Mr Kim with a “major” military response unless he ceases nuclear weapons tests, said the move “disrespected the wishes of China,” North Korea’s only ally.
And yesterday, the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson began a drill with the South Korean navy aimed at verifying the allies’ capability to intercept enemy missiles, a defence spokesman said.
Perhaps surprisingly, the US president’s tough stance seems to have gone down well with many South Koreans.
“When Trump was elected everyone thought he was crazy, but now some think maybe he is the right person to improve things,” said one DMZ tour guide who gave his name only as SP.
On the capital’s streets just 35 miles from the border, one 42-year-old woman said it remained “business as usual” for most South Koreans.
But there are few signs of complacency in the DMZ, where the bleak landscape is dotted with guard towers manned by stern-looking soldiers with rifles trained on the North.
At the heart of the zone is the “truce village” of Panmunjom, a cluster of blue huts where the North has been invited to take part in peace negotiations.
Visitors yesterday were allowed to briefly enter North Korean territory inside one of the huts, which straddles the official border. But stepping through the opposite door into North Korean countryside is strictly forbidden, with Taekwondo-trained soldiers stationed to deter would-be defectors.
At the Dora Observation Post, through a pair of high-powered binoculars, North Koreans can be seen toiling in the fields under the eye of watchtowers hidden in the mountains. Beyond the mountains lurk row upon row of long-range artillery systems – firepower that poses a bigger headache than the North’s haphazard nuclear programme.
“It would not be difficult to destroy his nuclear facilities, but...the US cannot destroy all of Kim Jong-un’s revenge power. A large number of civilians could be killed in retaliation,” said Cho Han Bum of the Korean Institute for National Unification.
Back at the DMZ, the tour guide SP, who has followed North-South relations for more than 50 years, fears he will never see the peninsula reunited.
“It is sad because though we are split in two we have the same culture, the same language, even the same alphabet,” he says.