Worldwide tensions hit Winter Olympics
North Korea-South Korea unease puts Games in precarious position
In February, South Korea will host the Winter Olympics. If there is an Olympics. If there is a Winter. Not to get all technical, but scary stuff is happening. There is tension all over the globe right now, and a lot of it is coming from North Korea, which is about 40 miles from the South Korean host city of PyeongChang.
That’s pretty close. Imagine if San Francisco were hosting the Olympics, and San Jose had massive heavy artillery pointed at S.F. and was threatening to unleash fiery hell if it felt disrespected.
Forty miles. Seoul is even closer than that to the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) separating the two countries. Seoul is 32 miles away — or, as they say in Seoul, “Ninety minutes by bus, seven seconds by missile.”
At least that’s what they said in Seoul in 1988, when I was there to cover the Summer Olympics.
I visited the DMZ. I stood within a stone’s throw of North Korea, and got a taste of the tension, fear, distrust, posturing and hate that flies back and forth across the border like a nuclear pingpong ball.
Tension was especially high in ’88 because the International Olympic Committee had rejected North Korea’s bid to co-host the Olympics, so North Korea was boycotting. (It is eligible to compete next year, though it’s unlikely any North Koreans will qualify.)
Back then, I kind of thought I was seeing an ugly piece of history that soon would disappear, or at least morph into some kind of peaceful coexistence. Surely somehow, human intelligence and brotherhood would prevail. Nope. The Winter Olympics looms, and the two sides are glaring like it’s 1988 all over again. Or 1953, when the Korean War ended and the simmering, hostile North-South glare-off began.
One thing this Olympics spotlights is the IOC’s gift for dropping the Games into hugely dangerous locations. Maybe the IOC folks, like me back in ’88, figured the situation would cool down. Instead, Korea remains the poster peninsula for the disease of Nobody Can Get Along With Anybody.
As an Olympics preview, here’s a look back at my visit to the DMZ, which since ’88 seems to have changed about as much as your grandfather’s taste in music.
The bus ride from Seoul was a pleasant cruise through green countryside. I had to ask what all the barn-size jagged-metal structures and huge concrete blocks sitting in the fields were. They were (and are) tank traps, designed to slow down the North army if it invades.
We arrived at Panmunjom, the “truce village,” a tiny settlement at the heart of the DMZ.
Quickly observed: For a demilitarized zone, the DMZ is surprisingly militarized. There are troops actively patrolling both sides of the line. Since the ’53 armistice, at least 800 soldiers have died in skirmishes along the DMZ.
We were shown photos of a gruesome incident in which a group of U.S. soldiers and South Koreans, sent to trim trees that blocked our view of the North, were attacked by North troops swinging longbladed axes. Two U.S. officers were hacked to death.
In Panmunjom, the North and South are separated not by a wall or fence, but by two parallel rows of white stakes, like out-of-bounds markers at a golf course.
The DMZ might be where the absurdity of war and threat of war are on sharpest display. The 200 U.S. Army soldiers stationed a few hundred yards from the line are, we were told, selected for their intimidating size. The 150 South Korean soldiers who patrol by their side are all martial-arts black belts, and they counter the big-beef intimidation factor of the U.S. soldiers by splitting trees with karate-style chops.
In a farm village next to the DMZ, the South Koreans erected a 323-foot-high flagpole, to fly their flag in the North’s face. The North countered with an eye-full tower, a 525-foot-high flagpole.
The North placed a stadium-size loudspeaker system atop a pole, pointed it at the South and began nonstop blaring of military music and anti-U.S. propaganda. The South retaliated, of course, by installing a similar system in a ginseng field. The South’s broadcasts often feature American rock ’n’ roll music.
The dueling speakers were phased out about 2004, but apparently got phased back in. You can’t kill rock ’n’ roll.
The North digs secret tunnels under the DMZ. Ever since the South discovered one such tunnel in 1978, our side keeps birds in cages in the tunnel, as early detectors of gas attacks.
There is a building that sits directly on the dividing line, in which negotiations between the two sides take place. A long table in the middle of the room is placed smack over the DMZ line, and a white line runs down the middle of the table. God help the general or diplomat who spills his ginseng tea.
There were reports back in ’88 that the North was seething. South Korea was being toasted and legitimized by the world, while North Korea only could peer enviously over its virtual back fence.
I wrote: It is also reported that the North Koreans have pledged not to disrupt the Olympic Games, out of respect to the North’s Soviet Union pals. Still, as a Navy commander stationed here said, “What we consider normal logic just doesn’t apply to the North Koreans. We really don’t know what we’re dealing with.”
Fast-forward 29 years. Same old same old, only more so.
Enjoy the Olympics.