From Seoul all the way north, the road leading to the inter-Korean border is in full swing. On one side of the road, cherry blossoms are in full bloom and the fields are filled with golden dandelions, contrasting with the barbed wire and sentry posts stretching along the Rinjin River on the other side. On April 18, a reporter from Global People visited the Korean side of Panmunjom.
Sixty-five years ago, the Korean Armistice Agreement was signed at Panmunjom. On April 27, the leaders of the two Koreas, Kim Jong-un and Moon Jae-in, will meet here. It was here, when the war stopped but began to divide and suffer, and now it is a place of peaceful rendezvous and full of hope.
Panmunjom
Panmunjom is located in the central and western part of the Korean Peninsula, 5 kilometers south of the 38th parallel, and was originally a small, unknown mountain village, with a straight-line distance of 52 kilometers and 147 kilometers from Seoul and Pyongyang, respectively. It does not belong to either north or south, and is officially called the Common Garrison District. In the decades after the war, the two sides successively built large and small buildings within the control of Panmunjom. Bounded by the military demarcation line, the South Korean side has the House of Peace and freedom house on one side, and the North Korean side has the Banmun Pavilion and the Reunification Pavilion.
Korea National Highway 1 to Panmunjom starts in Mokpo, South Jeolla Province, South Korea, and runs through Seoul to Kaesong, Pyongyang and Sinuiju in North Korea. Along the way, the vehicles passed through one checkpoint after another, and the reporter was reminded many times that the shooting interview could only be carried out at the specified time and range. Finally, the car stopped at the door of the Freedom House on the Korean side of Panmunjom.
Walking through the buildings, you will see several blue conference rooms built on the military demarcation line. Three North Korean soldiers in steel helmets and dark green uniforms stepped down the steps of the counter-panel doorway and walked near the conference room, seemingly changing the guard or patrolling. On the South Korean side, American and South Korean soldiers in camouflage uniforms faced the North Korean side and watched the whole process.
The House of Peace is a three-storey building, completed in 1989, with a press room and a small conference room on the first floor, a conference room and VIP room on the second floor, and a conference room on the third floor. Here, there have been many high-level contacts between the two Koreas, including the reunion of separated families and the operation of the Kaesong Industrial Park. During the talks, the North Korean delegation walked from between the blue conference rooms to the Peace House, while the South Korean side stood on the military demarcation line waiting for north Korean personnel to cross the border, and then the two sides entered together.
Recently, the South Korean side has been repairing the Peace House, including replacing the old internal facilities, arranging furniture, etc., until the completion of the 20th. At the time of the reporter's visit, the repair work had not yet been completed. The main entrance of the three-story building was temporarily fitted with a blue curtain, and tools such as ladders and shovels were placed in front of the door. In front of the building, a staff member is pacing and measuring with tools, and not far away another staff member is busy on an engineering vehicle.
From Pyongyang to Panmunjom, it takes more than 2 hours by car. On April 27, North Korea's supreme leader, Kim Jong Un, will set foot on the southern side of the Korean Peninsula for the first time. South Korean President Moon Jae-in will meet with Kim Jong-un that morning to hold an official welcome ceremony, hold talks with him, and set up a dinner party.
Common security area
Panmunjom was formerly known as Panmenli. In October 1951, the Korean War armistice negotiations were transferred from the outskirts of Kaesong, and in order to facilitate the Chinese representatives, the Chinese character Panmunjom signboard was hung outside a grocery store, hence the name. In July 1953, the Korean Armistice Agreement was signed and a common garrison was established here, which was jointly guarded by the United Nations army and the North Korean army.
The reporter saw that there are 5 simple wooden houses on the military demarcation line, of which 3 sky blue are the conference room of the Neutral Nations Supervision Committee (T1), the main conference room of the Military Armistice Commission (T2) and the small conference room of the Military Armistice Commission (T3). T stands for Temporary, and this "temporary" is 65 years. The communiqué officer of the United Nations Command, who served as the guide of the trip, told reporters that no one expected that it would take so long to name it "temporarily" when the venue was built. The T2 room is now the only "security" attraction that crosses the dividing line and is open to visitors on both sides.
In the common security zone, soldiers from both sides were able to move freely until bloody clashes in 1976, when the atmosphere suddenly changed. On August 18 of that year, the US and RoK soldiers planned to cut down a poplar tree that "hindered the observation of the US military", but the North Korean army tried to stop it, and the two sides clashed, and two US officers were hacked to death with axes. The U.S. military formulated a battle plan and dispatched armed forces to complete the task of cutting down trees. The DPRK side requested an emergency meeting and submitted a handwritten letter from NORTH Korean leader Kim Il Sung expressing regret. Since then, the military demarcation line in the common security zone has been marked. The reporter saw that there are cement piers 50 centimeters wide and 5 centimeters high on the military demarcation line between the meeting places, and there are 1-meter-high demarcation line markers erected at a 10-meter interval outside the venue, and neither side can cross them.
On November 23, 1984, when a Soviet tour group was visiting Panmunjom on the North Korean side, the Soviet Vasily suddenly rushed to the Korean side, triggering the most fierce battle at Panmunjom after the armistice, resulting in the deaths of 3 North Korean troops, 1 Rok army, and 1 United Nations army, which was the most fierce exchange of fire at Panmunjom after the armistice. The most recent clash occurred on November 13, 2017, when a North Korean soldier abandoned his car at a North Korean side post and ran across the border towards Freedom House, where North Korean troops shot at the demarcation line, making the atmosphere at Panmunjom extremely tense.
In 2000, the Korean film "Common Security Zone" set in Panmunjom attracted 5 million viewers.
"On the day I stepped on the train to go to the training center, when I gave my parents a big gift and walked out of the house, I felt regret in my heart..." Along with Jin Guangshi's singing, in the picture, at the outpost on the side of the North Korean side, the Korean soldiers sat together, remembering their relatives, changing addresses, taking photos, and raising glasses together.
In the film, Korean soldiers not only exchange cigarettes, but also quietly go to each other's outposts to drink and chat, celebrate birthdays, and send gifts to each other. Lim Dong-won, a former president of South Korea's National Intelligence Service who served as a special envoy to South Korean President Kim Dae-jung, said that when North Korean leader Kim Jong-il met him in 2002, he said: "Not long ago, I watched the "Common Security Zone" filmed in the south, and it was very well filmed. Although young soldiers are enemies of each other, as the same people, but also as people, they can transcend ideas and understand each other. The film does a great job of portraying the contradictions caused by institutional differences rather than the hatred between individuals. ”
Stills from the movie "Common Security Zone"
Re-emerge
Today's Panmunjom, in addition to completely preserving the memory of the division of the peninsula, has also become an important window for inter-Korean communication and easing relations.
Various dialogues have also taken place here since the first preparatory meeting of the ICRC talks was held between the two sides in 1971. According to South Korea's Ministry of Unification, as of April 17, the ROK and the DPRK had held 655 talks, of which 360 were held at Panmunjom.
On August 15, 1989, South Korean university students Lim So-ching and Father Moon Kyu-hyun returned via Panmunjom after participating in the World Young Students Celebration in Pyongyang, marking the first time since the division of the peninsula that a private person had passed through Panmunjom. On June 16, 1998, Jeong Joo-yong, then president of the 83-year-old Hyundai Group of South Korea, took 500 cows north through Panmunjom to visit north Korea, becoming the first South Korean entrepreneur to visit North Korea. It took 15 minutes for 50 cattle trucks to cross the military demarcation line that day. South Korean media called the act a "cowboy fight."
The staff at that time recalled that if the truck broke down and the cow escaped, it would become a big problem. To ensure safety, loading starts the night before. On October 27 of the same year, Zheng Zhouyong was invited to visit the DPRK again and gave 501 cattle to the DPRK. 100 of the first cattle were pregnant, and calves were born in August of that year. Zheng Zhouyong also brought 100 trucks. As for why 1,001 cows were driven instead of 1,000 integers, Kang Seok-sung, who worked at South Korea's Unification Ministry at the time, said 1,000+1 meant a new beginning.
Zheng Zhouyong
This move prompted the Kim Dae-jung government to start a "sunshine policy" toward the DPRK. During Mr. Jung's second visit to North Korea, Mr. Kim met with him at the Hundred Gardens Guest House, saying he wanted to expand economic cooperation with South Korea, which relayed the news to Kim Dae-jung. A month later, North Korea opened Mount Kumgang to South Korean tourists, and the first inter-Korean summit was held in 2000, followed by the construction of the Kaesong Industrial Park, followed by a second inter-Korean leaders' meeting in 2007.
The Dorasan North-South Immigration Office is at the forefront of inter-Korean economic cooperation. South Korean personnel working in the Kaesong Industrial Park enter and exit through this area. The staff told reporters that when the park was operating normally, there were as many as 20 buses to and from the DPRK side a day, and more than 200 people visited the place every day. "At that time, the parking lot was full of trucks loaded with North Korean-made products," the staff stressed, "from the south to the north, it was to leave the country instead of going abroad, and to come back was to enter the country and not to return home." ”
Regrettably, inter-Korean relations have retreated in recent years. In 2008, the South Korean side interrupted the Kumgang Mountain tourism project, and in 2016, the Kaesong Industrial Park was completely suspended. Direct dialing between the two Koreas was also cut off, and the original method of reading face-to-face notices by UN Command officers using portable megaphones became the only means of communication between the two sides in the common security zone.
On January 9 this year, the two Koreas held high-level talks at the "House of Peace" in Panmunjom to discuss the north's sending of delegations to the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics. With this as a starting point, inter-Korean relations began to warm up.
Today, the words "2018 Inter-Korean Leaders' Meeting" and "Peace, New Beginning" are flashing on the electronic screen at the exit gate of the Immigration Office, and customs declaration forms are neatly placed in the window, as if ready at any time. The staff said that they hope to normalize economic cooperation and exchanges between the two Koreas through the leaders' meeting and truly bring vitality to the place.
A few days ago, at the leaders' meeting held again between the DPRK and the ROK after 11 years, Kim Yi-hyun, spokesman for the Blue House of the ROK Presidential Office, said that this move is to "guide the way" for the DPRK-US leaders' meeting and start a "journey of world peace." Jung Dong-yong, a member of parliament who was a former minister of reunification in South Korea, told Global People that the meeting at Panmunjom was symbolic. He said that the armistice agreement meant that the war was not yet over in theory and that he hoped that the meeting would lead to a genuine declaration of peace.
Author: Chen Shangwen, special correspondent of "Global People" in South Korea