Paju Imjingak Peace Gondola, the DMZ, and a New Friend

Did you know that the Korean War has never officially ended? Before the onset of a global pandemic changed everything, many people who heard us talk about the possibility of going to South Korea inevitably asked, “Aren’t you scared of North Korea?” While we haven’t felt afraid, it is an unsettling feeling to live in a country that has existed in an uneasy armistice with its sister nation to the north for 70 years. Currently, the closest you can safely get to North Korea is to visit the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), and the closest such point to us is at Imjingak, about 50km north of Seoul. We were able to visit this area a few weeks ago with a knowledgeable friend and impromptu tour guide.

To appreciate current relations between North and South Korea, it is necessary to understand at least a brief history of how the Korean Peninsula was divided. (Stay with me – this won’t take long!)

Spoiler alert: Korea had very little to do with its current divided state. It was a united country under the Joseon Dynasty for more than 500 years until 1910, although it was re-named the Korean Empire in 1897. Japan, after signing a protectorate treaty with Korea in 1905, then annexed the country in 1910 and ruled until the end of World War II in 1945, a period of great civil unrest.

With the end of WWII, the Japanese Empire was dismantled and Korea was arbitrarily divided into North and South at the 38th parallel, part of the spoils of war. Korea had no part in this decision-making, which was determined by the Allied Powers. The division was meant to be temporary, with the U.S.S.R. accepting Japan’s surrender in the north and the U.S. in the south. Instead, Korea became another casualty of the Cold War as the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. then were unable to agree on how to reunify the country, eventually sponsoring separate elections in the north and south.

In 1948 North and South Korea were permanently divided without their consent, with the U.S.S.R. backing communist dictator Kim Il-Sung in the North and the South falling under the leadership of U.S.-backed leader Syngman Rhee. Both leader’s “elections” are thought to have been manipulated by their respective backing countries, and both elected governments then claimed to represent the entire Korean Peninsula. However, the South became the “Republic of Korea” (ROK) and the North the “Democratic People’s Republic of Korea” (DPRK), with the 2.5 mile-wide DMZ in between.

Early in our stay in Seoul, we booked a tour of the DMZ, where with a specialized tour company you can visit the Joint Security Area at Panmunjom. When it is open, it is the closest you can get to North Korea. Here, North and South Korean troops stand face-to-face, guarding the incredibly secure border between the two nations. Unfortunately, our tour was cancelled when COVID-19 spiked in the Seoul area, and we haven’t yet received word about when they will begin running again.

In the meantime, a friend in Philadelphia introduced us (virtually) to a friend living north of Seoul, a retired Korean pastor who now works on peace and justice issues and has a special interest in relations between the two Koreas. To protect his privacy, I will call him Mr. Lee. We had the privilege of spending a day in Paju at the Imjingak Peace (or Unification) Park and a small piece of the DMZ with Mr. Lee as our tour guide. His perspective helped us gain a greater understanding of some complex inter-Korean issues.

Though the nations have been divided for more than 70 years, North Korea figures heavily in South Korean media. Two of the Korean media sources we visit regularly have a section devoted entirely to news from the North, and on multiple news sites there often is a headline related to North Korean happenings. Over the past week, there have been even more headlines than usual as a military event in Pyongyang over the weekend included parading an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM). A weekend of celebrations in the north marked the 75th founding anniversary of the Workers’ Party, the only political party allowed to exist under the the Kim family’s dictatorship (first established by Kim Jong-un’s grandfather, Kim Il-Sung).

Experts speculate that Kim is working harder than usual to placate a country that has been ravaged by COVID-19, a record-breaking monsoon season, and multiple typhoons over the past months. He unexpectedly apologized for the killing of a South Korean official who was shot last month after drifting into North Korean waters off the west coast of the country. (It is still unclear exactly what the official was doing there.) At least publicly, the South Korean government has focused more on the apology than on the violent event. However, the incident was big news here as this is the first time in a decade that a South Korean citizen was killed by North Korean forces. Kim delivered an unprecedented apology to his own people over the weekend, which experts believe may also be related to severe economic difficulties currently plaguing the North.

As is often the case, media can only take you so far in understanding, and there is no substitute for hearing someone’s personal story. Mr. Lee picked us up at the northernmost Seoul subway station on a Saturday morning and drove us to Imjingak, the site of a Peace Park and a gondola that crosses the Imjin River into a tiny piece of the DMZ. We had to show our Alien Registration Card (ARC) and sign in at a desk in order to buy tickets for the gondola.

Once over the river, we were in a small park with a path that leads to a now-defunct U.S. military outpost. You can’t see into North Korea from this part of the DMZ – only into the former U.S. base. The area was heavily fortified with a tall fence and barbed wire, and signs were very clear that the area outside of the fence is mined. Seeing these signs of violence while looking back over the peaceful river and lovely park was really jarring. I was reminded of similar feelings I had when I visited the Balkan Peninsula as a seminary student. There, we also could not walk through inviting green fields and forests because of the threat of land mines.

Neither the DPRK nor the ROK accepted the arbitrary separation of their country in 1948, and in June 1950, with the backing of the U.S.S.R. and China, the North invaded the South. This began the Korean War, which was an effort by North Korea to re-unify the Korean Peninsula under communist rule.

With the advantage of surprise the DPRK quickly overtook Seoul and advanced across the ROK. The United States and then the United Nations came to the aid of the South, but the ensuing war was long and destructive, with approximately 3 million fatalities, a large proportion of them civilian. Both sides engaged in mass killings of civilians and the torture and starvation of prisoners of war. Seoul was captured on four separate occasions. Both North and South Korea were largely destroyed and had to begin rebuilding from the ground up when the fighting finally stopped.

In July 1953, the war ceased not with a peace treaty but with an armistice agreement that created the Korean DMZ along the 38th Parallel. Neither country gained any significant territory through the conflict. The armistice solidified the separation of the two countries which technically remain at war. Although most prisoners of war were returned, families that were divided by remaining on different sides of the 38th parallel had no recourse for reunification.

Taking the gondola back out of the DMZ and over the river, we visited the Unification Park, built with the hope that someday the two Koreas will be reunified peacefully. It is dedicated to the millions of Koreans who were separated from their families when the peninsula was divided, including Mr. Lee’s family. While in the park, he shared the story that his father and uncles were sent to the South prior to the war to try to find better jobs. While they were there, the war broke out, leaving them stranded, separated forever from their parents and other family in the North. This heartbreaking story is all too common in Korea.

A memorial within the park, Mangbaeddan, serves as a place where those displaced from their hometowns in the North can come to honor their ancestors on special occasions such as the New Year and Chuseok (the mid-autumn festival). When Chuseok was celebrated last month, we learned that the most important part of the celebration for traditional Koreans is the ritual to honor one’s ancestors, which typically takes place while families visit their hometown. Losing this cultural tradition of paying respect in one’s family home is especially painful for older Koreans. It was a privilege and a deep sadness to visit this place with Mr. Lee.

The park at Imjingak holds other monuments to all that was lost as a result of Korea’s division and subsequent war. A piece of the Gyeongui Train Line, annihilated at the start of the war in 1950, has been partially rebuilt (though it has nowhere to go as the bridge was demolished). A steam engine that was caught on the tracks and destroyed at the initial invasion stands as a memorial to the many wartime devastations.

Prayers for peace in the form of colorful ribbons and banners are prominent. You can also view the Bridge of Freedom, the only bridge connecting the South with Panmunjom in the DMZ. It was utilized at one point to exchange POWs between North and South, but now it is little-used. Several times over the past decades, a train has been allowed to pass north to deliver humanitarian aid, but mostly it is another relic of a separated nation.

To state the obvious, North and South Korean relations are complicated. Depending on who you speak with and what you read, you can gain a variety of perspectives on the political and personal ties between the two countries. There is a South Korean Ministry of Unification, which has existed in some form since 1969. Its overall goals are to support inter-Korean dialogue, humanitarian assistance for North Korea, and support for defectors who come to the South. Reunification itself is a complex issue, with recent South Korean conservative governments typically opting for disengagement with the North, while more liberal governments have focused on inter-Korean exchanges and support for bilateral summits.

A 2018 survey by the Korea Institute for National Unification found that 58% of South Koreans were in favor of reunification with the North, down from 69% in 2014. According to the same survey, only 39% of participants in their 20s thought reunification was necessary. Those younger people that did favor reunifying thought the primary benefit would be temporizing the North as a security threat, while South Koreans over 60 tended to emphasize the countries’ shared national and ethnic identity.

Over a cup of coffee after visiting the park, we were honored to have a more in-depth discussion with Mr. Lee about the various perspectives on Korean reunification. Some South Koreans wish for reunification in the form of peace between the two nations, not a full joining of the countries under one government. Many older Koreans hope to see the day when safe and easy travel between North and South will be possible, even if the countries technically remain separate.

The role of the U.S. in this endeavor is also complicated, with the vast majority of South Koreans, almost 70% in one survey, reporting their belief that Korean reunification should be accomplished without any foreign assistance. Though many were hopeful that Donald Trump’s denuclearization summits with North Korea would lead to better relations, they were disillusioned when the U.S. government then failed to follow through on further talks, and relations stalled with no great progress made. Those who dream of a unified Korea are cautiously optimistic once again, as current South Korean president Moon Jae-in favors deeper engagement with the North.

South Korean leaders walk a difficult line, as while some believe engagement with North Korea is the only chance of achieving peace and unification, others criticize the government for turning a blind eye to the North’s many human rights violations. Some have called for striking a better balance between demonizing the North and ignoring their leaders’ ill treatment of ordinary citizens as well as political rivals.

We are learning so much through the opportunity of living in this beautiful and complex country. We are grateful for the introduction to our new friend, Mr. Lee, and for his willingness to engage with us on a deeper level of building cross-cultural and personal understanding. This is a challenging time, and we are reminded of how important it is to listen to one another’s stories, even when they are hard to hear.

You can see more photos of our visit to the Paju Imjingak Peace Park here.