Trip to North Korea
Day 4
Friday
14th August 2009
Trip to North Korea
Day 4
Friday
14th August 2009
Day 4
This morning’s wake up call came at 5:45 am, a perfect time to see the sun rising over eastern Pyongyang from the window of my room. It was a magnificent sight as the huge orange ball of light illuminated the city, with swirling morning mists over the Taedong River and the tall Tower of the Juche Idea, with its red flame-shaped top, rising through the mists into the skies overhead.
We arrived at Panmunjom a little after 10:30 am, having left the hotel at 7:15 am. Upon entering the Demilitarised Zone (DMZ), we received a briefing from a KPA (Korean People’s Army) officer, after which we lined up and walked into the DMZ in a single file line. The DMZ is really mis-named; it is the world’s most heavily armed and militarily tense area. It is 4 kilometres wide, comprising a northern two kilometre wide zone administered by the DPRK and a southern two kilometre wide zone administered by the ROK. In the middle of the DMZ at Panmunjom is the JSA (Joint Security Area), which is where a line of negotiating huts straddles the border, with half of each building in North Korea and half in South Korea. Provided a person stays within the building and exits through the same door that they used to enter it, it is the one place on the Korean peninsula where a person can walk freely between North and South Korea.
On 7th July 1994, President Kim Il Sung proposed a 3-point charter for the national reunification of Korea. Essentially a “one country - two systems” model, he proposed a Confederation of Koryo that would allow the North and the South to retain their respective social, political and economic systems under a single umbrella national government to handle foreign relations, the armed forces, and so on. He proposed that this be done by Koreans without outside influence, and that there would be freedom of movement within the country for all its citizens. After unification, the Korean people could then vote over time on various aspects of the details for a unified system. Sadly, the day after he signed the document outlining this plan, Kim Il Sung died suddenly from a heart attack - the unification document was his final item of work. As a result, the North Koreans have erected a large monument with Kim Il Sung’s 7-7-94 signature very close to (but not facing) the border, and this monument was our first stop upon entering the JSA at Panmunjom.
Our time in the negotiating hut was limited, so we exited and went up to the balcony of a multi-storied building that looks down on the border and negotiating huts. Especially interesting was the view of some groups of tourists arriving on the southern side of the border; it was obvious that they were under much stricter control than we were by their dress code, the identification badges they were wearing, the prohibition on pointing, the tightly disciplined lines that were maintained by the soldiers, and the prohibition on getting an elevated view from the southern side. By comparison, we enjoyed quite a relaxing and certainly illuminating experience.
We had an early start that morning, so although it was midday we headed into the nearby city of Kaesong (just 7 kilometres away) for a lovely Korean style lunch. After lunch, we climbed the nearby hill for wonderful views over the city of Kaesong. Kaesong is almost the only city in Korea still to have a large number of old buildings; this is because negotiations were also carried on in that city and so it avoided the carpet bombing that most of the Korean Peninsula suffered between 1950 and 1953.
A KPA colonel accompanied us to the Concrete Wall, and after describing its layout and construction he called it “the tragedy and cancer of Korea”. He reiterated a common North Korean slogan, which is “let’s hand down a unified Korea to the new generation”. He outlined why North Koreans see the US presence in South Korea as the enemy to reunification. As he explained, the presence of US troops in Korea cannot be justified as necessary for the defence of the US, but it is clearly an aggressive act. As he said, “imagine if there were 50,000 North Korean troops in Mexico on the border with the US. Would the US allow that? Would they agree it was necessary for the DPRK’s own defence, or would they see it as an act of aggression? That is how we see the US troops on our border”.
After this stimulating discussion, we were taken outside to look at the Concrete Wall four kilometres to the south through powerful field glasses. When I went to the Concrete Wall last year, conditions were a bit hazy, and a few students were not even sure whether they had seen it or not. That was not an issue this year - conditions were clear and everyone was quite certain they had seen the Wall, together with several well defended observation towers flying the UN and South Korean flags.
As entered the southern outskirts of Pyongyang, we stopped at the Monument to the Three Charters for National Reunification. This was a huge but elegant arch spanning the wide road in the form of two Korean women in traditional dress - one representing the north and the other the south - reaching out with their arms for each other. It is perhaps Pyongyang’s newest monument, having been completed in August 2001 following very productive talks between the governments of North and South Korea. In the words of the ‘Pyongyang Times’, “Against a background of the ever-growing mood for achieving independent reunification, peace and prosperity by the concerted efforts of the Korean nation itself, the monument serves as the banner encouraging the fellow countrymen to further efforts for reunification”.
To see a gallery of photos of Day 4 (morning), click HERE.
To see a gallery of photos of Day 4 (afternoon), click HERE.
Friday, 14 August 2009