It is only 35 miles from central Seoul, but the village of Daeseong Dong is difficult to reach. To get there, you race north up Chayuro (“Freedom Expressway”) until you reach a checkpoint manned by armed infantrymen.
If your paperwork and ID is in order, you then drive through the barbed wire to the joint South Korea-US Camp Bonifas – complete with its helicopter pad and bunkers in its central lawn. The next obstacle is an anti-tank wall, watched over by guard towers every 100 meters and with wicked Claymore anti-personnel mines planted every 10 meters.
A few minutes’ drive through low, wooded hills brings you to the modest village of 207 souls. Backed by hills and nestled among paddies, with tractors standing outside vinyl greenhouses, Daeseong Dong looks like any farming hamlet: It boasts a school, a village hall and a modest church.
But it stands in the shadow cast by a huge South Korean flag flying from a 98-meter high flagpole. An underground shelter is notable at its center and there is a plethora of men in camouflage uniforms. The village’s most prominent building is manned by troops; the sign at its front entrance proclaims, “Battle Room. Stand By!”
DMZ quiet – but not quite normal
Daeseong Dong (also spelled Taesong Dong – “Freedom Village”) is the only civilian village in South Korea inside the Demilitarized Zone, or DMZ, the four-kilometer-wide buffer zone that bisects the peninsula.
Life is quiet, but not quite normal. Village households, largely engaged in the cultivation of their unique “DMZ Rice,” are exempt from national tax; males are exempt from military conscription. But they are subject to the onerous entry and travel issues, and a sunset-to-sunrise curfew.
The village hall’s roof offers binoculars trained on North Korea. Its cinema is defunct, but its school is lively. Boasting the highest ratio of teachers to students in Korea – 10:35 children – its eight local pupils are joined by 27 children from the nearby town of Munsan. US troops from Camp Bonifas volunteer to teach English.
“Since Daeseong Dong is very close to North Korea, there is sometimes a nervous atmosphere,” headmaster Jin Young-jin said. “We do drills once or twice a year to go into the shelter.”
Close is right: Daeseong Dong lies less than 400 meters from the Military Demarcation Line, the actual border that runs through the DMZ, and just 1.6 kilometers from the only North Korean village in the DMZ, Kijong Dong. South Korea claims Kijong Dong is uninhabited, a propaganda village notable only for its 160-meter flagpole.
Residents don’t seem unduly excited about upcoming prospects. Friday’s summit between North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and South Korean leader Moon Jae-in will be held in the nearby military truce village of Panmunjeom, whose only residents, unlike Daeseong Dong, are soldiers. Asked about his hopes for the summit, Mayor Kim Dong-gu’s response was simple. “I anticipate a more peaceful atmosphere,” he said.
Excited signage, surging hopes, achievements
He is not the only one. If signage springing up around Seoul, around Gyeonggi, the province surrounding Seoul, and Paju, the county just south of the DMZ, is any indication, South Korea has gone summit mad.
A giant banner draped over Seoul’s City Hall reads, “As South and North make peace, Seoul City goes together.” In the city’s Foreign Press Center, a huge sign proclaims the summit’s branded tagline: “Peace, a new start.”
Beyond the capital, expectations are even higher.
“End of separation, beginning of unification” reads a slogan on a camouflaged observation post south of the DMZ. A sign beside an army position guarding the Han River bank some 20 miles north of Seoul – wired off to prevent North Korean amphibious infiltration – reads “Gyeonggi Province, toward reunification.” And the slogan on an arch over the checkpoint that leads into the DMZ reads, “Reunification-preparing Paju County.”
Many are excited. “I think South Koreans will be able to visit Pyongyang very soon!” a Seoul citizen, vacationing in Europe, texted a foreign reporter. Currently, South Korean tourism to North Korea is illegal.
Much of this is coming from the top. One of Moon’s key pre-election promises was upgrading relations with the North, but even he must be elated at developments since January. Even seasoned Korea watchers are surprised by the speed at which events are moving.
Developments, thick and fast
Kim has promised a missile and testing moratorium; said he will discuss denuclearization; agreed to hold Friday’s inter-Korean summit, and – critically – offered to meet US President Donald Trump. North Korea attended the Winter Olympics in the South, and high-level envoys crisscrossed the DMZ.
Inter-Korea telecommunications, severed in 2016 amid high tensions, have been reconnected. A first-ever direct hotline between the leaders of the two Koreas was connected last week. Also last week, a plenary meeting of the North Korean Worker’s Party Central Committee heard of plans to cease missile and nuclear tests and shutter the nation’s underground nuclear test site. In a televised announcement, Moon hailed the moves. Yesterday, the Koreas agreed to halt propaganda cross-border broadcasts.
In their Panmunjeom summit on Friday, Kim will be offered the photo-op of a lifetime as he crosses the inter-Korean border. Moon has said that a peace treaty to finally end the 1950-53 Korean war – which was halted by an armistice – will be on the table. Both sides’ definitions of “denuclearization,” the process to reach it, and preparations for the crucial Kim-Trump summit, are likely to be discussed.
Parts of the summit will be televised live, and post-summit, the two leaders will cap their negotiations with a dinner, Seoul’s presidential Blue House has announced.
Pragmatism, cynicism and dire warnings
But some urge caution. While the inter-Korean summit looks set to go swimmingly, major question marks hang over the Kim-Trump summit – the first-ever meeting between a US and North Korean head of state.
In an editorial column on Tuesday, the Korea Times warned that the failure of the two previous inter-Korean summits – in 2000 and 2007 – to entrench positive change should caution against over-expectations, and that denuclearization “…is far from reality. The North has never committed itself to it.”
The column warned that both Seoul and Washington seem to be suffering from confirmation bias, “seeing only what they want to see and what they want to hear.”
Such thinking indicates that Moon and Trump could be hoodwinked. Both certainly seem eager for success with North Korea: Moon to reduce peninsula tensions, Trump to create a historic legacy where his predecessors failed.
The critical question is what Kim means by denuclearization. North Korean media wrote last week that national efforts “to gain the strong treasured sword for the preservation of peace has been brought to a stellar conclusion.” With the “treasured sword” being nuclear weapons, it seems unlikely Kim will abandon them in toto, even if he makes some concessions.
Washington’s demand, however, is unequivocal: complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearization (CVID).
Pyongyang has offered moratoriums before and abrogated them. Its shut-down of its nuclear test site is an acceptance of geological realities: the site is collapsing. And anyway, after six detonations, Kim’s arms have been suitably tested.
Extreme critics of Moon, the architect of the current process, go far beyond The Korea Times in their critiques.
“I am very pessimistic, I think it is very dangerous to have this kind of ‘pseudo-pacifism,’” said Cho Young-hwan, a conservative rally organizer and right-wing activist. “Moon is not a [South] Korean president, he is a kind of servant of North Korea – a nation destroyer!”
Back in Daeseong Dong, inside the silent DMZ, Jin is calm. He has no apparent ideological leanings, but also seems indifferent to the high expectations affecting many of his countrymen. “After the summit, there will be no change,” the headmaster said. “The children know about the summit, but don’t expect much.”
there is a possible agreement avsailable to the koreas if the us,. stays out of the process.but chances of that are nil .the hedemon u.s will not stay out!!! the warmongering u.s for some stupid reason wants a regime chance because its communist .then why the huge american investment in china no one seems to speak of. its becasue wall street doesn’t trust the north as they did the so. to play ball according to wall street rules. if kim is smart and he is ,he will make a deaql with trump based on that and keep his nukes as an insurance poi[licy against a regime change attack by the hegemon u.s.
Koreans are Koreans whether they are from the north, south, east or west of the country. They are of one blood and they are brothers, sisters and cousins. Their country, Korea, was one country for more than one thousand years. Their country was divided into two parts as a result of the invasion of USA in 1950 and the continued occupation of the south part of Korea by American soldiers, like Vietnam was divided into two parts as a result of the invasion of USA. All Koreans aspire to a reunified Korea. South Korea is not and has never been an ally of USA. Instead, USA holds South Korea hostage since 1950. North Korea became a nuclear power because of the invasion of Korea by American soldiers. If USA puts an end to its invasion of Korea, Korea will be reunified like Vietnam was reunified as soon as all American soldiers were kicked out of Vietnam in 1975.
What planet were you born on….USA didn’t invade Korea ,the north with help of Russian n Chinese invaded the south,,,,if not for USA their is no s.Korea..
Likely there will be a face-saving deal between North Korea and the USA. Both parties have too much to lose if there will be a war. North Korea will stop all new development of nukes, terminate missile testing, and testing of bombs. North Korea will be recognized as a responsible nuclear power.
The only problem I see, is that South Korea is not a truly a Sovereign Nation. The South Korean military is under the command of a four-star US general, who can do whatever he want with the South Korean soldiers. South Korea has outsourced its negotiations with North Korea to the US, and is only consulted, and then informed about the US decisions. President Trump has been kindly enough to give South Korea his blessing to talk with North Korea! Very generous of you, Mr. Trump!
Anyway, President Trump dreams of glory, ticker-tape parades, and a likely Nobel Peace Prize, will hopefully prevail over draft dodger Mr. John Bolton and the many war hawks in Washington doomsday plans for Korea. President Kim public statements of “de-nuclearization” has won sympathies world-wide, it will be an uphill struggle to justify a new US Korean genocide.
Lesson to be learned for South Korea and Japan; regain your Sovereignty, oversee your own defenses, and terminate the US bases. No problem continuing being a US allied, but manage your destiny as a Sovereign nation. Mr. John Bolton will not hesitate to throw South Korea under the bus, if he is given the opportunity.
Gary Battaglia Typical biased and brainwashed western narrative. US is the first to propose division of Koreas into North and South with Soviet Union before WWII ended, when it could have adapt a policy of ensuring Korean consensus on the independence issue – but NO, US proposed division right from the start. US then put Japanese collaborators in charge of south – which tatamount to after French helped American independence war thought it was a good idea to divide the colonies into North and South then put British collaborators and sympathizers such as Benedict Arnold in charge of Northern colonies – a sure recipie for peace, YA THINK?!
Qian Deng,
Gary Bataglia is a typical American. Stupid, ignorant, murderer, rapist and a liar.