Remembering the soldier in the picture
In early December 2017, a dramatic story appeared on television news of a North Korean soldier who crossed through a military checkpoint at the DMZ (called Panmunjom) in a jeep, left the vehicle, and sprinted across the border while being pursued and shot at by his fellow North Korean soldiers.
He was wounded four times while South Korean soldiers risked their lives to bring him to safety. He lost nearly half of his blood but somehow survived the ordeal.
For me, this harrowing story connects to a 4-by-4inch photograph I took at the same place in December 1973, with my little Kodak camera. It is of a North Korean soldier peering directly at me through the plate-glass window of a simple structure we might call a double-wide trailer at the 38th parallel in northeast Asia. It is where negotiations have taken place alltoo infrequently between North and South Korea, along with their primary partner nations China and the United States.
That year, I was there with my recently arrived Peace Corps volunteer group of about 40, preparing to teach English in schools. We studied the Korean language, ESL methodology and Korean culture eight hours a day for three months. On one of our days off we traveled by bus from our training site to this remote area to learn more about the terrible reality of a divided country — a reality that had more to do with the self-interests of superpower nations back in the 1950s than it did with the will and welfare of the Korean people.
Back to the North Korean soldier in my picture. He stood about 5-foot-8, dressed neatly in his double-breasted uniform coat with red trim, uniform hat, and trademark communist red star. In the faded photo, his dispassionate face betrays a hint of real curiosity.
I have often wondered what he was thinking and feeling at that moment. Did we look like spoiled, rich Westerners? Excited kids just out of college? Threats to the Kim Il Sung regime? The personification of freedom that he yearned for but had never experienced? The promoters of a fragile peace?
Within that building was a long table with about 10 empty chairs on either side. At one end of the table sat American and South Korean flags with the tips reaching 2 feet above the table. At the other end was a North Korean flag that stood 2 1/2 feet above the table. Our guide explained that each side kept replacing the flags so that theirs was a little bit higher. When it became apparent this competition was no-win, only U.S. soldiers who over 6 feet were stationed there because the shorter North Koreans would never be able to match them.
This kind of one-upmanship continues today in the form of political rhetoric, name-calling, and yes, bomb building. In the meantime, North Korea has developed real nuclear weapons along with the capability of delivering them to the American mainland. My greatest hope is that the countries most directly involved — North Korea, South Korea, China and the U.S. — will soon fill those empty chairs at Panmunjom and engage in real dialogue that will reduce, if not end, the suffering and division that have plagued the Korean peninsula for the past 67 years.