thiis

We drove for what seemed like days from the grey of Seoul to the macabre nonsense of the Demilitarised Zone, popularly known as the DMZ. The DMZ is an idiocracy, a special place reserved for the ultra-madness of the Cold War.  The DMZ is located on the 38^th parallel, which is where the opposing forces of American Democracy and Chinese Communism agreed to end the Korean war. Except the Americans didn’t and now under the guise of a United Nations command, control the South Korean side. Korea is painfully cold during the winter months. Listening to some fat ass U.S. G.I. telling you not to stick your tongue out to a plaque board, makes me want to kiss the business end of a pistol. It’s important to remember that the two Koreas are still at war. Officially there’s a ceasefire and that’s it. No truce nothing. Just men staring, waving and occasionally shooting each other.

The whole tour is one huge propaganda joy-ride maintained by the Americans who have the South Korean’s glued to their dicks. The tour starts off uncomfortably. A boring  bunch of Westeners and the lone Indonesian looking at each other, wondering when we’re going to see guns. It picks up, mildly, when the exquisitely rotund Corporal Rodriguez tells the story of “The Experiment”.

“The Experiment” is the attempt to create two “peace villages” on either side of the DMZ, where citizens are exempt from paying taxes, military duty and other meaningless facets of civic life. The two villages were supposed to erase 50 years of fuck you but as usual human error fucks things up. The great white West claimed the village built by the North Koreans is a painted shell, a concrete lie. Why though? Who would the North Koreans impress? CNN and BBC?  Bill Clinton? Marks Maponyane?

Corporal Rodriguez and his gravy eyed partner Pvt. Jenkins are accurate portrayals of the stereotypical, average American. Not the idealised pictures of New York but the real Midwestern bible thumping, XXL jeans wearing, crew cut, Eminem loving, happy drawl, vacant stare, Turducken eating, Gatorade drinking and Nascar loving American. The type of American you see on Micheal Moore documentaries.

Every ten years or so, the North Koreans come out of their nuclear powered hut and do some military drills that “accidently” blow up an island or a South Korean ship. The North Koreans, though along with the Somali pirates are secretly my heroes. They are complete badasses. Nobody knows how to deal with them. They flatly deny any wrong doing. “Blow up a ship? Nah, wasn’t me” and as long as China is silent, South Korea can expect more “military drills”.

Another one of the North Korean provocations are the tunnels they dug sometime in the past, which almost lead to Seoul. They claim the tunnels are for coal mining. The South Koreans claim otherwise but without great Satan’s permission to blitzkrieg the fuck out of North Korea, they just sulk and put up posters of human rights violations.

One of the most pathetic shows put on by sovereign governments is the story of the flags. South Korea erected a not abnormally tall South Korean flagpole on a mountain visible to the other side. North Koreas response was to erect what was at the time, the world’s tallest flag pole complete with propaganda blaring speakers. The South responded with an even larger flag pole with, wait for it…christmas carols 24/7.

The highlight of the trip is entering the negotiation room, where both Koreas sat down and then accordingly told each other to fuck off and not to be seen in each other’s soju bars. On the south side, there are South Korea soldiers decked out in a uniform that would put the ZCC to shame.  The Muammar Gaddafhi style soilders stand in some sort of Tae Kwon Do death stance. I was warned repeatedly not to get too close or else they’ll get all OldBoy on my black ass. Outside the negotiation room while Corporal Rodriguez was telling me not to point, a crack team of North Korean spies came out, waved and then video recorded us. A South Korean solider jingled over to the edge spoke into a walkie talkie and pointed, whilst a further three soliders lined up behind him and stood at attention in their ZCC suits. It all felt too put on. I expected a dance routine to follow.

Interestingly, visitors to the communist side say that the exact same thing happens there. The nonsensical spectacle of men in tights showing nauseatingly naive westerners the perils of capitalism and pointing to the “other side”. The DMZ is a fossil, a remnant of an earlier age, a portal to step into and gawk at how grown men can play chicken with each other for over 50 years and play silly fucking games with other peoples countries. It’s a sadly amusing “demilitarised zone” where America is still allowed to play Uncle Sam and get away with it. The tour ended with a stop at the “cafeteria” and curio shop where you can buy North Korean imported rice wine. I left far more bewildered than when I arrived. No concrete answers, just the vague feeling that somewhere far away a group of old rich white men were laughing.