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Checkpoint 3

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The little powder blue building felt good against my back as my fingers deftly danced over the Zippo. It came to life, the cigarette lit, I closed my eyes, inhaled the sweet smoke deeply, and reflected.

My mind gently drifted back to April of 1998. Back to a traveler\'s meeting with a German trekker in a little bakery cum coffee shop in Namche Bazaar, Nepal. It was then that I swapped a quite forgettable, heavily dog eared paperback for a copy of a book by William H. Vatcher Jr. titled PANMUNJOM....

The book was tired. Forty years of existence must have seen it pass through countless pairs of hands, and perhaps, through just as many airports. Its labored account of the Korean War Armistice negotiations droned on and on, yet something lived. I had been captured by an intrigue; disbelief that humanity could be so stupid as the book accounted.

Two hours earlier our tour bus crossed into the Military Exclusion Zone on the forty kilometer journey from Seoul. Since that moment the words of the book took on an overwhelming material form. In its place of genesis the volume came to life.

The tank traps, guns, countless barriers, bunkers, security checks, helicopters, signed minefields, rigid instructions and warnings, UN and Communist Guards and masses of barb fencing were real.

Korea was still at war, despite the opinion of some of the South\'s youth. This military milieu provided the perfect backdrop for the stories I had been told by those that knew. Stories of spies, infiltration, death, propaganda and covert actions. The Communists and the \'free world\' still tussled, face to face, for keeps.

I had found my way to the "truce village" of Panmunjom, ironically on the same day that South and North Korea held the first joint meeting between their leaders since the war started 50 years ago.

Gone were the traditional thatched roof dwellings and neatly tended fields that I had seen in the U.S. military photo archives replaced by a number of gloating edifices, a row of nondescript huts, manicured lawns, paved roads and a collection of observation posts.

My powder blue brace, \'Checkpoint 3\', perched atop a little hill overlooking North Korea, was the most famous of these posts.

Two kilometers either side of me razor wire topped chain link fences ran coast to coast. These defined the neutral 250 kilometer wide winding corridor, the landmine Elysium, that is the Demilitarized Zone, a buffer established as part of the Korean War truce to keep the two Koreas apart. Beyond these rusty markers the countryside bristled with tanks, artillery and infantry negotiating the innumerable minefields; scrupulously training and retraining, just in case.

Running through the middle of the DMZ a series of innocuous white concrete posts marked the Military Demarcation Line (MDL), the de-facto border between the two Koreas.

These markers, which would have been more appropriate on a golf course, determine the official combat line that bisected the peninsula when the armistice was signed on July 27, 1953. And here I was, smack bang in the guts of it all, indulging in a cigarette.

Lost in my own little world, I almost missed the muffled words of my tour partner Rose. "This would have to be the most bizarre tourist attraction in the world," she said quietly.

That broke my mind\'s idle wandering. I opened my eyes and started to say something but was struck dumb by her remoteness. Obviously she had her own reasons for being here and there was no question that they ran deep.

Silently I pocketed the Zippo and turned my attention to the theater beyond. The peacefulness of the dusky, rolling hills lining the Panmunjom valley was perfect enough to be eerie.

From my vantage point, I gazed north a short distance beyond the border to the \'Potemkin\' village of Kaesongdong, the site of the worlds biggest flagpole, from which hung the world\'s biggest flag. The dwarfed structures beneath it were nothing more than a front, a stage, a gathering of soulless shells of buildings, an artifact of the Communist propaganda machine.

Although a small hill on my left obscured its wealthy South Korean \'sister\' village, Taesongdong, I had noticed it earlier in the tour, from the security of my bus seat.

The village was clearly branded by a 110-meter flagpole that was graced by a T\'aeGuk-Ki (South Korean) flag half the size of its northern counterpart. It was impossible to miss. Significantly, this flagpole was the first of the two to be erected.

On this fine day, 160 meters above the ground the 31-meter long North Korean ensign wallowed in the wash of the light Siberian wind, struggling vainly to broadcast its message to the \'peace loving peoples of the world\'.

According to \'Rodong Sinmun\', the North Korea Workers\' Party newspaper, the flag serves to remind us of "the independent dignity of Kim Il Sung\'s nation, which gives high pride and self confidence to the Korean people and arouses great envy and admiration among the world people".

It actually reminded me of Vatcher\'s account of the first armistice meeting. He wrote, "during the recess the Communists placed the flag of North Korea on the conference table close to the United Nations flag, which had been placed on the table by the UNC prior to the opening - it being assumed that the Communists would do likewise. The North Korean flag was several inches taller than the UNC flag, which was supposed to symbolize defeat."

If it weren\'t for the somberness of my 31 fellow tour members, I would have let out a snigger or two at this point. The phallic analogy was just too real to ignore.

It seemed ridiculous to respond in that way, yet that sweeping emotional transition was what it evoked. I welcomed it and turned my attention to the spectacle in front of me.

Perched on the hills just outside the northern boundary of the DMZ the three Hollywood style propaganda signs stood proudly. Unlike the monster banner, which because of its sheer mass was a fair weather flyer, they remained immutable, oblivious to the elements.

According to the tour guide, the sign closest to Kaesongdong translated to "Follow the light of the leading star", in reference to the North Korean President, the late Kim Il Sung.

The other two signs beckoned me to translate their message with my rudimentary understanding of Hangul. I suspect that the architects of these beacons of wisdom didn\'t consider my inability to decipher their script in their design brief. Had they done so they may have added English subtitles.

Rose tapped me on the elbow and pointed to a big black rectangle a little further west.

"That\'s a huge stack of speakers," she drawled in her conspicuous Midwestern accent. "You know, that technology there? Well it plays North Korean opera for up to 12 hours a day. I never heard North Korean opera."

I don\'t like opera, and I was pleased that it was quiet. Maybe the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea was on a power conservation kick. I doubted it.

A few hundred meters away a pair of white herons frolicked in the midday sun. In one of the ironies of this land, the DMZ has become a refuge for over 140 rare and endangered species, including possibly the last remaining population of Siberian tigers on the Korean peninsula.

In this setting it seemed preposterous to consider that those hills just beyond were armed to the teeth with artillery, ready and waiting to blow us all to bits.

Just like President Clinton, when he visited this spot shortly following his first presidential election victory, we were ready targets. For a few brief moments I amused myself wondering whether the next U.S. President would be following in my Australian footsteps in few months\' time, and whether he would be wearing a flak jacket.

Again, Rose interrupted my musings. It seemed to me that she was here to bring me back to earth, to remind me of the substance surrounding me.

"That down there, that little bridge, well, that\'s the Bridge of No Return. Yep, that\'s it, that\'s the bridge."

I got the idea. Politely, I made my way to the front of the crowd and looked down. I knew that the bridge was where the prisoners of war had been released following the signing of the truce. They had been given the option of going either way, north or south, but once they crossed there was no going back.

At the south end of the bridge stood the now disused UN \'Checkpoint 4\' while the north end was adorned by the dreary gray North Korean checkpoint. Incongruously a permanent concrete wall blocked off the northern access to the little bridge that spans the MDL.

As I idly tossed around the contradiction of the \'Bridge of No Return\' only having one end open, someone handed me a pair of field glasses and motioned me to look at the guard post on the far bank.

Eagerly I brought the little building into focus only to be confronted by a pair of binoculars pointed straight back at me.

With surprising speed and clarity I recalled the \'Mexican stand off scene\' I\'d viewed in so many of the old westerns I used to watch as a kid, and wondered whether John Wayne had ever felt the same chill that had just run through me.

Nervously, deliberately, I broke the visual contact and moved my field of view to the three Koreans working on the ditch just a few meters south of the out of bounds markers.

As they went about their business they seemed oblivious to the fact that they were as close as any living person on this planet to the last vestige of the Cold War. Perhaps, like us, they had been warned not to make any gestures or movements that may later be used as propaganda by the North Koreans.

Their movements, as they went about their daily business, however, belied no concern that those men in the drab olive uniforms across the border were painstakingly monitoring them. Nor did they pay much attention to another busload of tourists who\'d come to gawk at the sideshow.

They most likely didn\'t notice us being ushered off to board the bus for the final short leg back to Camp Bonifas, where the souvenir shop and lunch waited.

As I solemnly turned to turned to leave, my irreverence somewhat subdued, I chanced a glance over my shoulder, wanting one last glimpse of the place I had come to see. Rose still stood there, alone, her gaze locked onto the bridge below.

The little black box in the distance caught my eye and I returned to the thought of those speakers pumping out opera for 12 hours straight.

Ambling out of the \'designated smoking zone\', just a few paces to the bus door, I wondered if they didn\'t have it all wrong and whether random explosions by Neil Diamond or some other Western pop icon wouldn\'t have a better effect.

I giggled as I visualized the actions of a busload of tourists suddenly treated to the greatest of them all, belting out "You ain\'t nothin\' but a hound dog..." across the most heavily fortified military zone in the world.

Back on the bus, I entertained myself by thinking about the contents of a compilation CD that could be made for the North Korean audio show.

Rose, as she had done for most of the tour, stared blankly out the windows, eyes fixed, head still.

I had decided against \'Stairway to Heaven\' when she turned and faced me.

"Did I tell you about my husband, Frank?"

I shook my head, puzzled at her question.

"Well, he crossed that bridge back in \'53, you know," she said calmly. "He was in intelligence. His mission was to be captured by the enemy and get information back to the UN forces."

I stared at her, bereft of any meaningful response.

"Of course that was before I met him. Anyways he\'s gone now."

I dropped my head and closed my eyes, for the second time on the tour. What was this place, what was I doing here? Hell, what was anybody doing here in this absurdity?

I reached into my little backpack and pulled out PANMUNJOM.

"Rose," I said.

"Hhhhhmmmm?"

"I want you to have this, I have no further use for it."

As she placed the book on her lap, I noticed my bookmark, a North Korean propaganda leaflet that I had found in the woods one day in Tongduchon, peeking out of the pages. The thought of keeping it as a trophy flitted through my mind. Resolutely, I decided to leave it there. It belonged with the book, and the book was no longer mine.