Sunday, May 17, 2009

Joint Security Area on the Demilitarized Zone




OK- so I've been wanting to do this tour to the DMZ and see where this all went on.  I always get this feeling in the pit of my stomach whenever I see that fence.  You know the barb wire that keeps Korea split in 2 pieces.  I have the burden of knowledge that says that fence is a joke.  And there's a lot more than cameras pointed South from up there.  I'm sure I've mentioned on more than one occasion that Kim Jong Il is a nutjob and he is.  His reality is the only one in 7 billion people on earth that allows him to live that way.  To get so fat whilst the people and country he inherited from his father starve and suffer.  Whatever.  

So we left at 11AM for Panmunjom and on the way, hit Infiltration Tunnel #3.  If you recall the visit to Infiltration Tunnel #4, it was all started when Kim Il Sung (help the Russian Army- get your own country) stated that tunnels are more effective than nuclear bombs.  Well, someone didn't tell his kid that because those psychos are starting to cook up the glow again.  Good for them building nukes when there's nothing to eat.  Anyway, I'm sure it was forced labor like everything else up there, because if someone told me to work 12-16 hours a day to dig a tunnel for President Obama, I'd tell them to stick it where the sun don't shine (then I'd be digging a tunnel underground if I didn't have the freedom to say no, or the ability to survive saying something like that there).  Back in the days those were discovered, the S Koreans really got scared.  It was said the North could move 30,000 troops an hour through those things.  But here's what would happen.  They'd get a few hundred through, the ROKs would give them a firefight and they'd clog that hole with bodies.  But an invasion from there wouldn't be nice for anyone around here, that's for sure.  But there's a gift shop at every stop, so the Korean People's Army (KPA) would have a nice choice of souvenirs to take back with them.

We went to the train station they built up there, but they don't move anything north on the train there.  Nice station, but no one uses it.  Another gift shop.

Then we went to Camp Boniface and got our briefing on how to behave up there.  We were told not to gesture or communicate to any N Koreans up there and that we'd be photographed and recorded.  Fine with me.  So we walk to the part where you see the buildings they negotiated in for the Armistice, and we go in the blue building #2.  I'm just a few feet from N Korea.  And the guard is at the other end on the building- just standing there.  There's ROK Soldiers in there standing guard and they have the doors locked and they don't move.  They have sunglasses on and they have their stance. We're told to not touch them, talk to them, or go behind them.  To Be Continued...

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