The Two Koreas_ A Contemporary History - Don Oberdorfer [4]
The serenity is deceptive. The demilitarized zone, or DMZ, between North and South Korea is bordered by high fences of barbed and razor wire on the north and south, and guarded on the two sides by more than a thousand guard posts, watch towers, and reinforced bunkers across the width of the peninsula. On hair-trigger alert behind the fortifications are two of the world's largest aggregations of military force-1.1 million North Koreans facing 660,000 South Koreans and 37,000 Americans, the latter backed by the full military power of the world's most powerful nation. All sides are heavily armed and ready at a moment's notice to fight another bloody and devastating war. Now that the Berlin wall has fallen and the Soviet Union has collapsed, this pristine nature preserve marks the most dangerous and heavily fortified border in the world. The common wisdom of American GIs on duty in the area is "there ain't no D in the DMZ."
Across these fortified lines have flowed the passion and invective of an ancient nation that was suddenly and cruelly divided in the twentieth century by the great powers. The DMZ has been violated by tunnels, defiled by infiltrators, and scarred by armed skirmishes. The melodic call of its birds has been marred by harsh propaganda from giant loudspeakers erected on both sides to harass or entice the troops on the opposite lines. At the Joint Security Area in the clearing at Panmunjom, the only place along the course of the buffer zone where the barbed wire and mines are absent, low-slung conference buildings have been placed squarely atop the line of demarcation, and the negotiating tables within them are so arranged that the dividing line extends precisely down the middle. Here the hostility is palpable and open. Northern and southern troops scowl, spit, and shout obscenities at each other outside the conference buildings, and there have been shoving matches, injuries, and even deaths.
Panmunjom has also seen hopeful moments: meetings of special emissaries and political leaders, both publicized and secret; the transit of official delegations from one side to the other; the passage of relief supplies to ameliorate the effects of floods and famines; the return of prisoners and detainees from both sides; and the arrival and departure of would-be peacemakers and political leaders from the United States and other countries. If the hostility and tension on the Korean peninsula are ever to be alleviated through negotiation, the clearing at Panmunjom is likely to play a major role.
THE EMERGENCE OF TWO KOREAS
Korea is a peninsula of approximately 85,000 square miles, roughly the size of New York and Pennsylvania combined, which juts down from the northeastern part of the vast mainland of Asia. It is well defined, with seas on the east, west, and south and two large rivers, the Yalu and the Tumen, providing a natural boundary with the landmass on the north. Archaeological exploration has confirmed that it was inhabited at least 20,000 years ago, and some sites suggest that its human habitation began much earlier. By the fourth century B.C. the antecedents of the Korean state, a tribal kingdom called Choson, had emerged near the Chinese border in northern Korea. By A.D. 300 the Koreans had thrown off Chinese rule and developed three separate kingdoms in the north, southeast, and southwest of the peninsula. In A.D. 668 the Silla kingdom, with Chinese help, overwhelmed the other two and unified nearly all of Korea.
From that early time on, for nearly thirteen hundred years until the mid-twentieth century, Korea developed as a unified country under a single administration with a distinctive language and strong traditions. It invented its own ingenious writing system and the first known movable metal type a century before Gutenberg's invention in Europe.
Geography dealt Korea a particularly difficult role. Located in a strategic but dangerous neighborhood between the greater powers