Step by step

From a Northern perspective, the horizon is lined with short men wearing sunglasses and large black helmets. Feet firmly planted on the ground. Boyish features, completely immobile. Grey shirts, heavy military boots. Dark green trousers they seem to have grown out of. Day by day, the North faces bent arms, clenched fists trained to lash out. A bulky grey structure called ‘Freedom Building’ is as far South as they will ever get to look.

The irony of this term slaps my mind. I am on the Southern side of the DMZ, Demilitarized Zone, in the last separated country in the world: at the border between North and South Korea. The few visitors allowed have fear and unease written on their faces. Rising an arm or pointing could be offensive gestures to the enemy. We walk in one line, instinctively adopting soldiers’ manners.

I feel observed, as if a pair of laser eyes had zoomed in on me. My impression is right. Opposite us, 20m away, looms the North Korean answer to ‘Freedom Building’, an equally gloomy three-storey building with closed black windows. Almost invisible to the naked eye, a small hole opens in one window. An object is pushed into the opening. Binoculars! The North has acknowledged our presence.

We are being watched by North Korean soldiers completely alien to our reality. They watch solemnly dressed invaders, unaware that those are subjected to a strict dress code, forbidding modern items like flip-flops, hot pants, tank tops and baggy jeans. How would they react to such innovative clothing that has never reached their world, a world that has been locked up since the Korean war in the 1950s? No Western influence has since been allowed to corrupt North Korean minds. To them, our distant memory of six decades ago is still the state of the earth today. Huge masts tower behind the borderline, created to block off all received signals from abroad.

Right on the border between the two countries in this JSA, Joint Security Area, stand three huts, painted the colour of the Caribbean Sea. The central one serves to sign treaties. We may enter, have five minutes to cross the line. The only place to step on North Korean soil from South Korea.

Why witness this spectacle of brotherly hatred and gridlocked dialogue in the first place? Because underneath the debris of failed peace attempts lie persistent grains of hope.
The dream of freedom for all Koreans still crawls silently along the barbed-wired fences, across mine-covered fields. It waits patiently in the fully equipped but unused Dorasan train station, built in 2002 when Koreans briefly made a step towards reunification.

The railroad into North Korea should lead to Pyongjang and beyond, taking the Transsiberian Railway from London to South Korea. The vacant and silent station halls echo each visitor’s question: When? A poster on the wall projects the dream out there: Not the large station from the South, but the first station toward the North.