Lindsey Edson ″A traveler without observation is a bird without wings.” – Moslih Eddin Saadi

The shutter springs closed with a satisfying snap. "No!" A Korean soldier shouts, lurching forward and abandoning his Taekwando ready-stance while the perpetrator turns the camera over in his hand, marveling at the photograph. The owner only catches a satisfying glimpse of the framed land, spilling over rifts and valleys like a dragons back, before the camera is ripped brashly from his hands. The soldier locates and  hits the delete button faster than he could harness his own assault rifle. 

I looked around at the other tourists ogling the scene, who no longer dared to test the rules outlined so clearly in the pictures slashed in red at the "observatory".  No photographs,  no pointing, no loud noises, no gesture of any kind. We all stood there, teetering on the strip of demilitarized land separating North  Korea from its amicable and estranged Southern brother; two ideal poles of continuum, a war zone and divide for over 5 million families. 

I returned my gaze to the fixated viewfinder, looking through at a country rendered completely blank on Goggle Maps. At first blush, deer graze in an intact refuge of nature that's untouched by humanity, and  a charming village stands in the distance, wrapped in a modest and utilitarian bow with dotted blue rooftops lining the buildings. 

 But then the wind shifts,  and I  press my eyes hard against the viewfinder peering over North Korea. Rather than a utopia of sorts, a sobering emptiness blows across the scene revealing deception. I shuddered and felt a wave of muffled muttering to my left and right. 

Roads snake, climb and stretch into a dead end.  Animals eerily flock to isolated areas avoiding well-known mines. Skeletons of buildings stand erect with painted on windows like hellish doll houses, giving way to a hoax of a place with  empty shells made from poured concrete. No congested streets, or children playing, not even a whisper escapes. Programmers have shaped the topography and towers, leaving a city stuck in a jar of preservatives and incapable of breathing life.

I could now feel the heartfelt plea of reunification that the Southern brother aspires to, if it wasn't for the practiced artifact from the North. The dichotomy was translucent. Instead of a picture capturing North Koreas beauty, we gasp at the ironic and terrifying special effect instead; a ghostly country starving for life.