Hot on the heels of Vice President Joe Biden, Tony, Meg and I visited Korea’s Demilitarized Zone Saturday. Three weeks after Biden attended a ceremony for U.S. troops who died during the Korean War, we stood in the same spot as he did, surrounded on three sides by North Korea at the Joint Security Area.

We caught a tour bus at Osan Air Base at 7:30 a.m. and drove about 2 hours to the first stop: Imjingak, a park 4.4 miles south of the military demarcation line, where 12,773 Korean prisoners of war crossed the “Bridge of Freedom” from North Korea in 1953. The park features several war memorials, including a 21-ton Bell of Peace.

View from the rooftop.

Meg at the Bridge of Freedom.

Tourists tie ribbons on the fence with wishes for peace and reunification.

As usual, the fascinating history unveiled during our daylong tour was news to me. Declared an Imperial Japanese protectorate in 1905, Korea became an independent nation with the defeat of Japan at the end of World War II. With the Allied victory in 1945, the Soviet Union and the United States agreed to share temporary trusteeship of Korea, dividing the country roughly along the 38th parallel. Very different political and economic visions (communism in the north, democracy in the south) led to philosophical and, eventually, literal division of the country under different rulers. The Korean War, from 1950-53, saw both sides nearly take over the entire peninsula, but ultimately the Korean Armistice Agreement made the North-South division permanent. Both sides agreed to a demilitarized zone (DMZ), which stretches 250 kilometers (160 miles) across the country with a 2-kilometer (1.25-mile) buffer on each side of the dividing line.

Our second stop on the tour was DMZ Tunnel #3, one of four known tunnels built by North Korea. Tunnel #3, discovered in 1978 based on information from a defector, runs for a mile through bedrock about 240 feet underground. It was capable of moving a full military division (30,000 soldiers) each hour, and was apparently designed for a surprise attack on Seoul, less than an hour’s drive away.

We weren’t allowed to take pictures at the tunnel, dang it, but it was amazing! We walked down a steep incline to get to the actual tunnel. (Thank goodness they provided hard hats; I bonked my head on several low hanging sections of rock.) North Korea had painted the walls black and claimed the tunnel was a mine shaft. However, geologists say there’s no coal in this region. Tourists were allowed to walk about 1,600 feet into the tunnel before encountering the first of three blockades erected by the South. At that point, we were just 500 feet from North Korea. The North likely dug many more tunnels through the DMZ, but they remain to be found.

Our tour guide, Mr. Oh, in front of the tunnel map.

Next stop: Dora Observation Point, located at the northernmost point of the Military Demarcation Line. From the overlook, we could see both DMZ villages. Megan even spotted a few North Koreans through the binoculars.

South Korea’s Tae Sung Dong, or “Freedom Village,” is home to about 225 residents, who are required to stay there 240 days out of the year and observe an 11 p.m. curfew. Here’s an interesting article from CNN on the village: Life on the Edge in Freedom Village.

The North Korean village of Kijong-dong, or “Propaganda Village,” has always been uninhabited, and our military escort said the buildings are really facades with painted-on windows and doors. Until 2004, the village blasted communist propaganda encouraging South Korean defectors. A 525-foot flagpole (supposedly the tallest in the world) waves a North Korean flag weighing nearly 600 pounds.

This South Korean Army soldier insisted we stay behind a designated photo spot to take pictures.

But here’s a poster that showed our view of the North Korean village.

After a tasty Korean buffet lunch, we visited the Mt. Dora Train Station, where commuters can ride into North Korea for work at an industrial complex. The station was built in anticipation of rail service between Seoul and Pyeongyang. Maybe some day.

Our final stop was the most exciting: the Joint Security Area (JSA). Our tour group had to follow Pvt. Tekamp in two lines through the Freedom House (built for North and South Korean families to reunite, but that never happened) and out to the buildings where the two Koreas hold diplomatic meetings. South Korean soldiers stood guard in a taekwondo bulldog stance, facing north.

We spotted just one North Korean soldier on the steps of the Panmungak building. Here he is, and check out the binoculars in the window! It felt like we were stepping into a spy novel.

Inside one of the buildings (where microphones on the table relay everything to soldiers on both sides), Tony straddled the line between North and South Korea.

Here’s Megan with the South Korean guard (known as a Republic of Korean – or ROK – soldier) next to the table where microphones are lined up along the north-south dividing line.

This is the spot at the JSA where the demarcation line makes a sharp bend, so standing at the apex of the angle allows visitors to be surrounded on three sides by North Korea. That’s the North Korean flagpole on the left.

From the same point, we could see the “Bridge of No Return,” which was used for prisoner exchanges.

Next to the bridge sits a marker commemorating an event in DMZ history that nearly triggered another Korean war.

The Axe Murder Incident occurred on August 18, 1976, when CPT Arthur Bonifas, commander of the security company at the JSA and his executive officer, 1LT Mark Barrett, led a detail to trim a poplar tree that was obscuring the view of a United Nations Command checkpoint. Because the checkpoint was so close to the military demarcation line, guards were particularly susceptible to attack or kidnapping. The website ROKDrop has an excellent account of the incident.

Here’s the checkpoint as seen from the observation point. The gap in the trees was where the divisive poplar once stood.

In a nutshell, North Korean soldiers attacked the tree trimmers with their own axes, killing Bonifas and Barrett. In response, the UN Command decided instead of trimming the tree, they were going to cut it down. Operation Paul Bunyan was an overwhelming show of force designed to get the job done without escalating the tension between the two Koreas. Wikipedia has some fascinating details about the operation.

Capt. Bonifas’s wife, Marcia, was my mom’s neighbor at West Point at the time of the Axe Murder Incident. My mother recalls that Marcia was expecting her husband home in just three weeks when she got the news that he was brutally murdered. Megan says she’s heard the story many times, but visiting the DMZ made the story so much more real.