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OCTOBER 27, 2003
Popping Up To The DMZ It's just a bus tour from Seoul. No blue jeans, shorts, sandals, or booze. That might not sound like the makings of a fun trip, but it doesn't discourage the more than 150,000 tourists a year who flock to see one of the last vestiges of the Cold War: the DMZ. That's soldier shorthand for the Demilitarized Zone, which separates South Korea from its hard-line communist neighbor, North Korea. Bus tours to Panmunjom, the "truce village" under U.N. supervision that straddles the tense border, are a fascinating day trip for business travelers to Seoul with some free time on their hands. The tours run about $60, with lunch. Just 37 miles north of the South Korean capital, the area around Panmunjom is anything but demilitarized. Civilian bridges feature prominent slots for dynamite so they can be blown up at the first sign of invasion. Sandbagged foxholes and barbed wire fences line the main thoroughfare, marring the view of bucolic farmland and the coast beyond. Closer to the border, commercial traffic thins perceptibly and roadblocks pop up, manned by heavily armed South Korean and U.S. military police. The end of the road is Camp Bonifas, a U.S. military outpost that is run under the auspices of the U.N. Command Security Force. It serves as a trip wire for any surprise invasion by the North's 1.1 million-strong army. The camp's motto: "In Front of Them All." An uneasy truce has held since 1953, when an armistice divided the peninsula at the 38th parallel. Visitors are briefed on protocol (no unauthorized snapshots or finger-pointing at North Korean guards) and then escorted to the border at Panmunjom just 440 yards away. PALATIAL HALLS The DMZ itself is a no-man's-land that runs for 151 miles across the peninsula but is only 2.5 miles wide. The strip is so isolated that it has become a wildlife refuge for endangered birds and bears. The 960-square-yard U.N. Joint Security Area plaza at Panmunjom, however, seems more Disneyland than DMZ. Watchtowers are interspersed among palatial halls built to showcase each side's grandeur and entertain visiting dignitaries. Barbed wire and mine fields are replaced by little more than a line in the sand -- which a handful of defectors (from both sides) have crossed in the past 50 years. Enter one of the blue barracks-type buildings that straddles the border and walk past the long green felt-covered negotiating table to the opposite side of the room. Outside the window you see a change in the texture of the pavement. Welcome to North Korea. But don't expect a passport stamp: Beefy South Korean MPs block access to the door to the North. The tours may soon be a part of history, too. In June, the U.S. announced plans to move its troops 75 miles south of the border.  By Chester Dawson Get BusinessWeek directly on your desktop with our RSS feeds.  Add BusinessWeek news to your Web site with our headline feed. Click to buy an e-print or reprint of a BusinessWeek or BusinessWeek Online story or video. To subscribe online to BusinessWeek magazine, please click here. Learn more, go to the BusinessWeekOnline home page  | | |
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