Last Sunday afternoon, I addressed a gathering of just over 40 people at a meeting of the Geographical Society of New South Wales on the topic of “The Last Threads of the Iron Curtain”. As a former President of the Geographical Society, I try to maintain my support of the Society by delivering lectures from time to time, and this usually coincides with my annual summer break (winter in Australia) trip to Australia to see my family.
The inspiration of the title of this address was Winston Churchill’s famous speech at Westminster College (Fulton, Missouri, USA) on 5th March, 1946, in which he referred to the separation of the capitalist and communist worlds by declaring that “an iron curtain has descended”. Today, over half a century later, just two remnants of unreformed communism remain in the world, these being North Korea and the small separatist region of Transnistria. Their borders represent the last remaining threads of Churchill’s ‘Iron Curtain’.
I began my illustrated address with a brief look at four other nations that self-declare themselves as being ‘communist’ (because of the name of their ruling parties) - China, Vietnam, Laos and Cuba. In the cases of China, Vietnam and Laos, economic reforms have taken these nations well away from the type of society that Marx, Lenin or Stalin (or, for that matter, Mao) would have recognized. In the case of Cuba, economic reforms have only recently begun, but as Cuba is an island, examining its boundaries as evidence of remnants of the iron curtain would have made little sense.
Transnistria is a small state that declared its independence from Moldova after a bitter war of separation between 1990 and 1992. Officially known as the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic, it comprises a thin sliver of land about the size of metropolitan Sydney along the Dneistr River that divides Moldova from Ukraine. For all intents and purposes, Transnistria sees itself as an ethnically Russian surviving remnant of the USSR. Its capital city, Tiraspol, is decorated with Soviet monuments and symbols, including a new statue of Lenin in front of the Parliament Building and a Soviet T-34 tank beside the war memorial. Stephen’s photos of Transnistria revealed a place that seemed to be stuck in a time warp, with police in Soviet-era uniforms, cities dominated by Soviet-era architecture, and hammer-and-sickle decorations almost everywhere one looked. I also emphasized, however, that following the defeat of the Communist Party in the 2010 elections, and the rise to power of the pro-Russian Reform Party, economic changes have begun in earnest, and Transnistria’s centrally planned economy has started to change rapidly.
Given its larger size and significance, the bulk of my address focussed on North Korea, or as it is officially known, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK). I examined several border areas, both to the north with China and to the south with South Korea. As I commented during my address, it is a sign of the times today when we acknowledge that a remnant of the iron curtain is found between China and North Korea!
The first border area I examined was the Yalu River between the Chinese city of Dandong and the North Korean city of Sinuiju. The contrasts between these two cities was readily apparent in the photos I shared. Sinuiju is a run-down, grey, industrial city with almost no vehicular traffic and very little lighting at night. Just across the river, Dandong is a lively, vibrant, thriving city with new industrial estates, congested roads and bright lights, all driven by “Socialism with Chinese Characteristics”, otherwise known as rampant market capitalism. Much of Dandong’s prosperity comes from its
relationship with the DPRK, and there is a thriving tourism industry around sightseeing cruises on the Yalu River where Chinese people can get glimpses of Sinuiju, and around the Broken Bridge, a railway crossing that was destroyed by American bombing in 1950 and is now a lookout point to get close to the DPRK.
One of Dandong’s largest buildings is its war museum (known officially as the The Museum of the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea) which portrays the Korean War (1950-53) from a somewhat strident Chinese perspective. Another fascinating structure found in Dandong is the eastern end of the Great Wall at Tiger Mountain (Hu Shan). This section of the Great Wall twists and turns steeply over the summit of Hu Shan, offering spectacular views across into farming areas of North Korea. My audience was interested to note the difference in approaches to security between the two countries - North Korea has a somewhat flimsy wire fence along its boundary with China, whereas the Chinese are building very
substantial and intimidating T-bar concrete and barbed wire fences to deter would-be refugees from North Korea.
Further north along the Chinese-DPRK border is Mount Paektu (or Changbai Shan to the Chinese). Mount Paektu is a volcano that straddles the border between North Korea and China, and is regarded by all Koreans (North and South) as the sacred mountain that gave birth to the Korean people. More significantly to North Koreans, the slopes of Mount Paektu housed the secret base camp from which Kim Il Sung waged his anti-Japanese struggle during World War II. As such, it was also the alleged birthplace of Kim Jong Il (although most overseas commentators claim he was born in the same place as his mother was
situated at the time - Kharbarovsk in the-then USSR). Because of its revolutionary significance, Mount Paektu’s nearby town of Samjiyon houses one of North Korea’s most lavish larger-than-life socialist realist sculptures at the Samjiyon Grand Monument.
Before looking in depth at the border between North and South Korea - an authentic, fully fledged Cold War era boundary - I led the audience through a comparison and contrast between the two Korean capitals, Pyongyang and Seoul.
Although there were notable differences, such as the patterns of transport, economic system and the urban morphology, there were also many surprising parallels. Perhaps the most fascinating parallels were found in the two Korean War Museums, the ‘War Museum of Korea’ in Seoul and the ‘Victorious Fatherland Liberation War Museum’ in Pyongyang. Both museums are massive in scale, have grand exhibitions of military hardware, and even large social realist sculptures. Not surprisingly, the main difference between the two museums centered on the focal issue of which side started the conflict, presenting evidence to support their respective stances. It is often said that ‘history is written by the winners’, and the the highly divergent accounts of the Korean War displayed in these two museums was clear evidence of the truth of this claim.
In a small town called Sinchon near the border between the two Koreas, the North Koreans have built what must be one of the world’s most harrowing and gruesome museums. Known as the Sinchon Museum of American War Atrocities, the museum documents and conveys the story of an alleged series of massacres which resulted in 35,383 Korean civilians being killed in 52 days during 1950 by the US 8th Army. Illustrated by grainy photographs and unambiguously trenchant oil paintings, the
museum describes in horrifying detail the torture of Korean civilians, including an especially haunting incident in which 400 women and 102 children were said to have been burnt alive after having petrol sprayed on them in store rooms on 7th December, 1950. Only three children survived, and I shared the shocking personal account I heard from one of them (a man now in his 60s) when I visited the site in August 2010.
The nearest North Korean city to the border with the South is Kaesong, about 7 kilometers north of the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ). In many ways, Kaesong is a typical DPRK city except that it has a large area of traditional Korean style housing, the only place on the Korean Peninsula where such houses are still found as they were almost all destroyed during the Korean war elsewhere. The reason these old houses are still found in Kaesong is that the city was the site of many of the peace negotiations during the Korean War, thus avoiding the bombing and fighting that leveled most buildings in Korea at the time.
I concluded my address by comparing the quite different experiences of visiting Panmunjom and the Joint Security Area (JSA) in the DMZ from the northern and southern sides. There are some things that can only be seen when visiting Panmunjom from one side or the other. For example, when visiting from the South, it is possible to explore the tunnels that the US claims North Koreans were building under the DMZ in order to invade, and the modern but eerie and almost deserted Dorasan Railway Station, constructed about ten years for the proposed North-South passenger rail link. On the other hand, it is only when visiting from the North that visitors can go in the building where the peace talks took place between 1950 and 1953 (still with
its original furniture), the building where the armistice to end the war was signed on 27th July 1953, and the Concrete Wall that was built by the US Army in the DMZ across the entire Korean Peninsula in the late 1970s - the existence of which is officially denied by the US and South Korea.
Visitors can enter the negotiating huts that straddle the border at Panmunjom whether they visit from the North or the South. I
seemed to surprise many people in the audience when I remarked that such visits are far more relaxed when coming from the North than from the South. In the South, visitors must make arrangements well in advance, carry their passports, sign a waiver of rights, wear an ID badge, not carry umbrellas or wear caps, comply with a dress code, stay in regulated lines and not point fingers towards the North. None of these restrictions apply when visiting from the North, and the northern perspective also offers an elevated view of the JSA from a high building that is not permitted from the South, as well as the explanations of the situation that are far more detailed (if somewhat slanted).
Very few people have had the opportunity to visit the places I described during this address, and for that reason the audience seemed to be enthralled by the talk even though it was considerably longer than most of the Society’s addresses. As the Chair of the meeting, Mr Robert Solomon, wrote to me in an e-mail after the lecture, it was remarkable that the audience refused to disperse when invited for afternoon tea at the end of the lecture and chose instead to stay in place, asking questions and engaging in discussion.
Including the question-and-answer session, the lecture lasted a marathon 1 hour and 45 minutes. For those with sufficient motivation and interest (as well as the time), an audio file of the lecture can be downloaded using the link below, and a separate pdf file showing the 393 images used in the lecture can also be downloaded to accompany the audio file.
To download the audio file of this lecture, click HERE (mp4 format, file size 176.5 MB)
To download the images file of this lecture, click HERE (pdf format, file size 95.9 MB)