The DMZ and North Korea

I took a trip (popular with tourists) to the Korean demilitarized zone (DMZ), which is an awfully ironic name for a place with so many military personnel. In fact, I saw a group of US and Canadian armed forces here in addition to the South Korean military. The DMZ was created after North Korea invaded South Korea shortly after their post WWII establishment in the mid-20th century to ensure separation between the countries. The US dropped a crap-ton of landmines in the DMZ (which is only 4 km/2.5 miles thick) so that people wouldn't try to cross. Sadly, a lot of animals have lost limbs/lives to this.

Probably the most important historical takeaway from my experience in the DMZ (and maybe I should have known this from high school history classes), is that the division between North and South Korea was originally artificial! It had absolutely nothing to do with Koreans or their culture! Rather, since Korea had been occupied by Japan prior to the war, the victorious Soviet Union and US decided to "split up" their winnings; the USSR occupied everything north of 38 degrees latitude and the US everything south... Why couldn't the countries have just let the Koreans be?! In the 70+ years since, North and South Korea have evolved to become completely different culturally, but people still have relatives on the other side and they all speak the same language! It's interesting to me that some of today's greatest threats to peace seem to stem from the "afterlife" of WWII.

North Korea in the background, me in the foreground :)

People peepin' at North Korea

I got to walk down into a tunnel that North Koreans dug trying to sneak attack South Korea in the 1970s.

A factory town in North Korea that was used by a South Korean company from ~2006-2016 before they stopped cooperating. Now no one lives there.

Abandoned factory town in the foreground left. Kaesong, the country's third largest city, is off in the distance to the right of the GPS-jamming tower seen in the distant middle-left of the picture.