Cold War Veterans Blog

Panmunjom: The Last Frontier of the Cold War

A gift shop, a divided room and a monumental flagpole make the Korean border something of a tourist attraction.

By Huixia Sun

The Berlin Wall fell in 1989, but another hot spot of the Cold War remains. It is in a small village on the Korean Peninsula–Panmunjom–where the armistice was signed in 1953 to halt the Korean War. Soldiers today in North Korea have a new duty beyond being vigilant: tending to tourists.

After a two-hour coach ride from Pyongyang, my group of tourists from China arrived at the village near the 38th parallel. Our guide said that North Korean farmers worked in the fields even within two kilometers from the borderline while on the other side soldiers patrolled with weapons. Soon we saw huge columns of concrete on the side of the road. When we asked about them, the tour guide explained that once a war breaks out, the columns could be released to block the tanks from the south.

Danger is a selling point of Panmunjom tourism. A tour guide tells a tale occurring in 1984 with relish. At that time a Russian tourist attempted to enter South Korea from Panmunjom, and was followed by North Korean soldiers who opened fire. The ensuing exchange of gunfire left three North Korean soldiers, one South Korean soldier and one UN soldier dead.

Before we were allowed into the Military Demarcation Line, we had to wait for the four other groups ahead of us to leave the area. The tourist area was not big enough to receive many visitors at the same time.

As we waited, we saw North Koreans arrive in rank. Though not soldiers, they were in uniform–Kim's uniform: usually a jacket and pants in the same colour, either in dark brown or dark grey, made of a thin material suited for summer. It is a uniform popular only in North Korea. But our tour guide did not like the uniform. He, a Pyongyang resident, said he preferred white shirts or blue T-shirts.

Bored of waiting, we entered a gift shop near the entrance. All items were sold either in euros or North Korean won–not in American dollars or Chinese yuan. The U.S. is the enemy and therefore no commodities are measured in dollars. But why not Chinese yuan? An overwhelming majority of tourists are from China, not from Europe.

The tour guide told me that China's economic reform was a failure as more children dropped out of school and medical service was too expensive to afford. I asked him where he got such an impression. He said he read China Youth Daily and watched CCTV's Focus program. No wonder. The two programs were frontrunners in exposing the negative side of the Chinese society. I asked him about Korean newspapers. He told me that there are always four pages: two pages of good news about North Korea and two pages of bad news about South Korea and the United States.

Soldiers with rifles were highly vigilant towards any tourist who attempted to take their photograph. But some officers were not guarded against Chinese tourists, and one lieutenant colonel agreeably accepted a request to have a photo with him. This frontier is a tourist attraction, too, after all.

After about one hour of waiting, we finally got in to the area surrounding the Military Demarcation Line. We boarded a van offered by the military with a military tour guide. I had read from Chinese blogs of complaints that North Korea intentionally ignored the presence of Chinese soldiers in the Korean War. In a military tent where U.S., Chinese and North Korean troops negotiated for an armistice, the tour guide mentioned that China and North Korea fought together. Maybe they corrected the old version of the war after getting critical feedback from previous Chinese tourists.

Next we saw a monument of white marble. It was a wall bearing the late Kim's last signature on a paper before he died. The signature was worth commemorating because, according to the military guide, the paper was regarding a measure on the unification of the peninsula. "Before Kim passed away, he was thinking about the unification of the country," the military guide said.

We moved on to the Military Demarcation Line, the border with South Korea. A concrete bank on the border was 20 cm wide and 5 cm high. We could see South Korean soldiers across the bank. Prior to 1976, North and South Koreans could mingle around the area, but after a bloody conflict in 1976, the two sides were completely divided by the concrete bank.

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