North and South Korea remain as divided as ever, 70 years after truce

North Korea’s communications with the South and the UN Command have dwindled in recent years, with Covid-19 further encouraging its retreat from in-person meetings
It’s become harder to keep the peace and ‘reduce the chance of something untoward happening’, says a member of the UN Command Military Armistice Commission

North Korea

Jack Lauin Paju

Published: 4:00pm, 19 Feb 2023

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On the Imjin River, which crosses the heavily guarded demilitarised zone (DMZ) – the buffer area between the two Koreas – layers of ice were visible, a neat metaphor for hostilities between the two sides which have been largely frozen for 70 years.

No North Korean troops were seen on their side of the 245-kilometre (152-mile) Military Demarcation Line, the border marking the Korean war battlefront in 1953, when North Korea, China and the US-led United Nations Command finally signed an armistice to end active conflict.

North Korean soldiers have become a rare sight since the global outbreak of Covid-19. To ward off the virus they have avoided showing up, to the extent of suspending regular in-person talks with the UN Command.

“They no longer meet with us face to face,” said Lieutenant Colonel Griff Hofman of the UN Command Military Armistice Commission.

He was speaking on February 7 next to sky-blue huts in the commission-managed Joint Security Area near Panmunjom, a now non-existent village where a long and painstaking truce conference took place seven decades ago.

“It’s all done via the hotline, and they generally stay in Panmungak,” he said, referring to the main building on the North Korean side of the area, also known as the Phanmun Pavilion. “If North Korean troops needed to go outdoors, they wore hazmat suits.”

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North Korea claimed in July last year that its first coronavirus outbreak was caused by civilians who touched “alien things” near its border with South Korea. It warned people to be vigilant when dealing with balloons – likely propaganda balloons – and objects suspended from them, along the demarcation line.

Pyongyang has never confirmed the number of North Koreans that caught Covid-19, but began to report what it called “fever patients” in May. About 4.8 million people have had “fever”, it said, about a fifth of its population. The country has not reported daily case tallies since July 29 and said in August that it had overcome the virus.

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South Korean troops stationed in the Joint Security Area stared straight ahead on February 7 as usual, but there was no sign of their North Korean counterparts on their side of the heavily guarded zone.

In 2018, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un met the South’s president at the time, Moon Jae-in, at the truce village for summits that paved the way for short-lived optimism for peace.

However, the meetings eventually collapsed amid disagreements over demands for Pyongyang to denuclearise. By 2020, North Korea had severed hotlines with the South and in June that year blew up a joint liaison office in the North Korean border town of Kaesong.

South Korean and UN Command soldiers stand guard in the truce village of Panmunjom on February 7. Photo: EPA-EFE

On February 7, no villagers or troops were seen in the fields of North Korea’s Kijong-dong village in the DMZ, near a 70-metre South Korean tower fitted with cameras to observe the North’s military movements and other activities.

Known as the “propaganda village”, Kijong-dong merely keeps a pretence of civilian life under a 160-metre-tall tower flying the country’s flag.

The fog reduced visibility to a little more than 10km from the base of the South Korean tower, a few minutes’ walk from the conference huts.

However, the vantage point still offered a view of the partially obscured Kaesong, home to long-range artillery and rocket systems hidden inside its mountains, which Hofman said threatened the safety of Seoul. These could be brought out on railways and fired, then tucked away once again.

North Korea’s DMZ village of Kijong-dong, seen from a South Korea observation post on February 7. Photo: EPA-EFE

Hofman said no in-person meetings in the conference huts had been held since officer talks between the UN Command and North Korea in 2018 to negotiate the return of 55 sets of remains from the North to the South. Tours in the Joint Security Area run by the North were suspended in 2020 to try to prevent Covid-19.

The UN Command has to rely on the 24/7 hotline on the South side of the Joint Security Area to pass messages to the North Korean army to prevent surprises.

“The more communication that we have, and [ability to] let them know what’s going on, we would vastly reduce the chance of something untoward happening,” said Hofman, adding that the area was intended for neutral dialogue to create opportunities to de-escalate tensions and prevent conflict.

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Those who signed the Korean war armistice in July 1953 had no idea it would last so long. The agreement has brought 70 years of peace, albeit precarious, between the two sides with the DMZ and Military Demarcation Line as a de facto border.

The zone is off-limits to most South Koreans, other than those from the village of Daeseong-dong, who tend to a few rice paddies. Previously, they were residents there before the war. Labourers today are their descendants.

Rare cranes forage and feed in fields where, at this time of year, ice often forms in the furrows of the soil. In 70 years, the landmine-filled DMZ has become a wildlife sanctuary with little human disturbance.

“Our job is to make sure that hostilities don’t break out again so that we can continue to work towards a permanent peace on the Korean peninsula,” Hofman said. “I believe the 70th anniversary of the armistice is a very important commemoration of that.”