dmz debrief

Saturday last, my fellow ETAs and I went to the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea (a 2.5 mile-wide stretch of land separating the two countries). We began our tour by driving to the Joint Security Area (JSA), a place along the demarcation line (the actual border between the two countries) where North and South Korea can hold conferences and negotiations. During the tour at the JSA, I stood looking at North Korean warriors across the border and they gazed back through binoculars. Following the JSA, we went to the third tunnel of aggression. Four underground tunnels have been discovered for North Koreans to move soldiers into South Korea. This tunnel was discovered in the 1980s. When it was discovered, North Koreans claimed that was built from the south (the dynamite blasts prove otherwise) and then said that they were digging for coal (after coloring the inside of the tunnel black). Some think that there could be twenty other tunnels from the north. The final stop that we made on our tour was at a train station built to head into North Korea in the hopes of reunification of the two countries. Throughout the day I gained a new sense of reality of the war between these two countries. I saw armed soldiers standing face to face. I start to wonder: Where is the possibility of peace? Are there any solutions? I think that is the most difficult aspect of this situation. There do not appear to be any concrete solutions, only an interminable stalemate.

look at the man on the steps with the binoculars

 this was our tour guide/military escort

north korea

I attended a supplemental talk on North Korean refugees. During the two hours, we watched a 2004 BBC documentary on North Korea. Here is a section from my journal. It is obvious that I am still working through a few thoughts...

Where is the light? Where is the hope? How can people perform such atrocities against human kind? Biological warfare? Chemical weapons? Using humans-children-as expendable lab rats. His grandfather committed a crime against the state and he is sentenced to twenty years in jail. Two decades of torture, fear, pain, sorrow, darkness, evil. No reason, no comprehensible justification. Only power and control. The pleasure gained from the pain of others. How can this be tolerated? Who can allow this to continue? Who can participate? Man's inhumanity to man? Didn't someone say that once?* Do the people in North Korea understand what is taking place within their own borders? Is ignorance feigned? Naivete a show? At what point are individuals responsible for being brainwashed? How can someone survive a life of fear? Questions unanswered and suspended confusion. A game of waiting and wondering, but the stakes are so high. Why God? How God? Keep the balance, maintain the order, don't ripple the waters, deny self-responsibility, individuality and conscience. The essence of man is his ability to choose and say no. But we must deny that quality, surgically remove all contrary thought and action. People are breathing but not living. Another Holocaust. Yet somewhere there must be hope. God, there has to be a plan. Shine your light into this overwhelmingly dark place. For you ARE God. That is where my belief must reside. 

*The quote was taken from a poem by Robert Burns: From Man was made to Mourn: A Dirge, 1785:

'Many and sharp the num'rous ills
Inwoven with our frame!
More pointed still we make ourselves
Regret, remorse, and shame!
And Man, whose heav'n-erected face
The smiles of love adorn, -
Man's inhumanity to man
Makes countless thousands mourn!

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