Peering behind the bamboo curtain

Located within the Demilitarised Zone, the Joint Security Area is the frontline of a 60-year-old war for the people of South Korea. 

It sits in the western portion of the DMZ on the Military Demarcation Line that divides the two Koreas according to the Korean Armistice Agreement of 1953. Also often referred to as a “Truce Village”, Panmunjeom, or the JSA as it is formally called, is where South and North Korean troops stand on guard, staring at one another from a distance. Although this year marks the 60th anniversary of the ceasefire, the two Koreas are technically still at war. 

A mere one-hour bus ride away from downtown Seoul lies the area that was once described by former US president Bill Clinton as the “scariest place on Earth”. 

A trip to the JSA is an experience like no other. Armed soldiers patrol every corner, while the sound of practice gunfire echoes through the air, punctuating the warnings not to make any sudden movements or hand gestures so as to avoid any “misunderstandings” among the North Korean soldiers. The tension is indescribable. 

“The global perception of the peninsula is that a war could break out at any minute,” says Kim Bong-ki, head of the Seoul-based Panmunjom Travel Centre. “Tours to the DMZ tend to conjure up feelings of fear, but there is no need.” 

Kim hopes that PTC’s tours to Panmunjeom and the DMZ will give visitors an opportunity to learn about the current political and social situations in the two countries, especially the human rights violations in the North.

Unlike other tour agencies, the PTC offers participants the unique opportunity to speak with one of several former North Korean residents it employs through its “DMZ Special Tour with North Korean Defector” package.

“It was surreal,” says Amy Jenkins, a US traveller visiting the DMZ for the first time who specifically chose the North Korean defector tour because of the rare opportunity to ask questions about and hear a first-hand account of life in the North.

“I didn’t know the details. The fact that it’s still happening now to this extent, I had no idea,” she said in response to hearing one defector’s stories about the famine that caused her to flee her country. 

“At one point my malnutrition was so severe that even when I managed to find some scraps of food, I barely had the strength to eat,” says one of the tour’s defector-guides, who goes by the name of “Nam”. 

For 19 years, Nam served in the North Korean Navy in the city of Hamheung. Although she was employed in the armed forces, she barely made enough money to put food on the table, and she, like many North Korean soldiers, was on the verge of dying of starvation. 

Nam admitted to seeing countless military servicemen and women die from starvation every year. And despite serving her country for nearly two decades, she was eventually discharged due to her deteriorating health; she received no benefits and no compensation. Nam found herself left with nothing.

“I didn’t even know when my next meal would come,” she says. “My father died when I was young, so I was left to take care of my mother on my own. I soon realised that if I didn’t do something drastic, my mother and I were both going to starve to death.”

Nam chose a path that few of her compatriots dare to take, for fear of being captured and killed. She decided to flee the country, and tracked down a smuggler to help her cross the border into China. 

“I wanted to be free, I needed to be free,” she says. 

After crossing the Yalu River into China, she quickly realised that she would never be safe there: Chinese citizens receive a substantial reward for reporting and returning defectors back to North Korea.

“There are still a lot of people fleeing to China today, but it is becoming tougher and tougher not to get caught,” she explains. 

Around the same time Nam managed to make her escape across the border to China, a tragic train accident occurred near her old village, killing more than 800 people. Many of the corpses were dismembered and could not be identified. Nam’s mother saw in the tragedy an opportunity to ensure her own safety and that of her daughter by submitting a death certificate for Nam that claiming she had been killed in the crash. 

Nam continued her dangerous escape and journeyed for a year, making her way to Laos, Cambodia and Thailand before she was finally able to reach South Korea, where she has lived for the past year and four months. 

She has found the “freedom” of the South a bittersweet experience. 

“To be honest, there are times I have regretted my decision to flee,” she says with tears streaming down her face. “I have been turned down for jobs on many occasions when I revealed to people that I am a defector.” 

“A lot of times I just go home and cry and wonder why I came here. There are moments where I thought about going back China and trying to sneak back into my country, but since my mum reported to the government that I died, I am stuck with the reality that I can never ever go back.”