War, peace then what on the Korean Peninsula?

The Journalists Forum for World Peace, organised by the Journalists Association of Korea, afforded 80 journalists from 50 countries an opportunity to visit South Korea. Daily Trust on Sunday reports on a thriving country bearing huge war scars, and how they have turned these scars into beauty spots. The sun shone brightly over the port […]

The Journalists Forum for World Peace, organised by the Journalists Association of Korea, afforded 80 journalists from 50 countries an opportunity to visit South Korea. Daily Trust on Sunday reports on a thriving country bearing huge war scars, and how they have turned these scars into beauty spots.

The sun shone brightly over the port city of Busan on the southernmost tip of the Korean Peninsula. The cherry trees have already blossomed and the rains have washed away a lot of the flushed pink flowers, but the remnants are still a striking sight.
Busan is a thriving rich city, famed for its five ports, through which a lot of Korea’s products, and there are a lot of these, are exported, and where many of its imports come in. It is here, in the belly of this prosperous city, that one of the most striking memorial of Korea’s dark history, and potentially doomed future lies.
The United Nations has its first and only cemetery, dedicated to the soldiers who fought in the 1950-1953 Korean War which put a massive, deadly wall between North and South Korea, and a huge arsenal of weapons on either side.
Walking past the two soldiers standing sentinel at the main entrance, one is confronted by a small building in the shape of a chapel rising into the clear blue sky. Beyond this building, 2, 300 graves are nestled in the damp earth of Busan. They were of soldiers drawn from the 17 countries that participated in the Korean War on the side of South Korea.
We streamed into the chapel, which actually is a briefing hall where visitors are welcomed to the UN Memorial Cemetery and are informed about the history, courses and impacts of the Korean war in a short video, accompanied by booming surround sounds that in a virtual way throws one into the theatre of war.
In the video, there was a short black and white clip of a young, impressive-looking soldier, bare-torsoed, sitting on the back of a truck laughing. My mind dwelled on him. Was he one of the men killed in that war so far from home? Was he one of the men interred in the cemetery? Did he die in a hail of bullets or in a fireball? Did it happen while he was laughing?
Filing out of the hall, to the graveyard, where a ceremonial wreath was laid for the deceased soldiers, a UNMC official said that every day there are ceremonies to commemorate the men and the sacrifices they made.
The tombstones are planted in lush green grass; cold stones in the midst of flourishing fauna. And on the Wall of Remembrance, on the black tiles, were engraved the names of the about 40, 000 men who died fighting for South Korea under the UN banner. I looked at the names on the wall, wondering if that laughing soldier was one of them.
There is nothing beautiful about dying violently, as the men buried here did, but the cemetery is a beautiful, serene place. The “Paths of the Unknown Soldiers” are lined with blooming cherry trees, and the cemetery is fenced with niwaki trees, their leaves sitting like clumps of green clouds on the branches. And the storm drains are actually glassless aquariums in which brilliantly coloured fishes swim languidly. It is a beautiful place to be buried in and some spouses of the deceased soldiers have chosen to be buried here, next to their husbands.
If anything, this cemetery symbolises for me what Korea represents, an ugly duckling that has grown into a beautiful swan, and yet underneath that beautiful feather lies the ugliness that has the potential to consume it. It lies to the north, where the most militarised border in the world exists, manned by armed troops and invisible walls of landmines. Beyond this, further north, are the stashes or assorted missiles and the nuclear weapons that Pyongyang has been testing.

War country
Travelling northwards towards the border, one sees the mementoes of the 1950s war dotting the landscape and cropping up from the minds of the older Koreans, the ones who remembered when the country used to be poor, when their fathers used to scrounge for food from the ruins of their homes.
At a point, South Korea and Nigeria used to have the same Gross Domestic Product (GDP). That seemed ages ago. Sometime in 2015, during an interaction with the South Korean ambassador to Nigeria in Abuja, I had asked him how his country, without any natural resources and ravaged by a bloody fratricidal war, had managed to transform itself. Mr. Noh Kyu Duk said, “We had nothing, so we used the only thing we have. We used our human resource.”
I wondered if he had forgotten that South Korea has less than a third of Nigeria’s population, not to add that Nigeria has almost every natural resource imaginable.
But in the 1970s when Nigeria was drowning in petrodollars and the head of state then, General Yakubu Gowon, was reputed to have said Nigeria’s problem was not money but how to spend it, his counterpart in Korea had decided how to spend their money – to rapidly modernise their country, tearing down villages and building apartment blocks.

The frontline
There had been plans for us to visit the Demilitarised Zone (DMZ), the border with North Korea, necklaced by landmines and fierce soldiers. On the bus, a call came through, that the UN, which administers the zone, had cancelled our visit, “for military reasons.”
Our hosts from the Journalists Association of Korea were livid. Everyone had been looking forward to visiting the famous area. New plans had to be made. And we headed instead towards the Dora Observatory, located on the Dora Mountains (Dorasan) which overlooks the DMZ.
After the Armistice Agreement that led to a ceasefire in 1953, a ceasefire still in place today, which means the two Koreans are technically still at war, the North Koreans secretly dug several underground tunnels passing beneath the DMZ, and through which they could launch surprise attacks against the South.
Some kilometres North of Seoul, the South Korean capital, we drove by a barbed wires fence along the border with the North, dotted with abandoned military posts.
“There used to be soldiers manning the posts. Now the borders are monitored on camera,” Clare, our guide said.
Beyond the fence was an expanse of deserted land stretches into the distance, into what seemed like a waste land. There is a river in between, around which the barbed wire fence snakes, and during low tides in the afternoons, the river empties, making it possible for any troop to storm across on foot at certain points.
The South Koreans had built what they called the Unification Bridge and the Dorasan Train station is hoped to link the railway of the North and the South in the future. They are optimistic that unification would happen eventually; they don’t just know when. Every South Korean official I spoke to was optimistic. “We have to be ready,” they echoed.
But escalating tensions with the North following recent nuclear weapons tests have thrown spanners in the work.
The desire for reunification is mutual because the North has been speaking about it as well. It is the method that varies. It is what prompted the North’s invasion of the South in 1950 in the first place. And speaking to the North Korean ambassador to Nigeria, in Abuja, shortly before my trip to the peninsula, Mr. Jon Yong Chol had said, “The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) is proposing to reunify the Korean Peninsula under a confederacy, where different ideas will exist in the North and South. The South will remain capitalist, the North will remain socialist. We are proposing the Korean Confederacy.”
Looking out over the expanse of land between the two countries, I wonder if that laughing soldier in the video could imagine that 60 years after, the Korean squabble would have remained. Or if he had died somewhere in fields similar to these, his blood seeping into the rough terrain.

Peering into the misty North
Four luxurious buses bearing 80 journalists from 50 countries snaked up the road cutting into the Dorasan, heading to the Dora UN administered observatory, where an eye is kept on the borders. We arrived at a heavily guarded area in the midst of some mild drizzle, driving into an expansive parking lot with several tour buses parked while others were arriving. Tourists poured out into the military facility manned by young South Korean soldiers. Our bus parked right in front of a souvenir shop where visitors can buy DMZ emblazoned memorabilia; mugs, t-shirts, key-holders, chocolates and other trinkets, some of them narrating the history of the DMZ in one paragraph, never forgetting to mention how bitter the Koreans are over the separation.
In the briefing room, there was a young soldier standing with a cane in front of a map of the DMZ, every moll and hill captured in 3D. In American-accented English, he explained positions on the North Korean and South Korean sides, pointing out a giant statue of Kim Il Sung, founder of North Korea. The statue is massive, taller than any building on that side of the border. The soldiers also points out the positions of the infiltration tunnels the North had dug.
In the 4 kilometer-wide belt between North and South, an incredible nature reserve has sprung up, untroubled by man, save for the landmines that dot the terrain.
On each side of the river coursing between the two fences, there are huge flag masts rising into the sky, one flying the North Korean flag, the other the South’s.
I asked the soldier how the masts sprang up.
“They were built about the same time. It was a race to see who would build the tallest mast,” he said.
“Which one is taller now?” I asked.
“In the end, we realised it was an unimportant race, so we stopped work on ours. The North kept building. Their mast is about 10 meters taller,” he said.
On a good day, we could have used the mounted tourists’ binoculars to peer into the mysterious North, but there was a thick blanket of mist enveloping the scenery, ensuring that for us, at least, the enigma of the North is retained.

 Into the tunnel
The drive to the 3rd Tunnel took only a few minutes. And here, we had to wait for a batch of tourists to finish watching the video before heading into the tunnel.
The rain was just stopping and people were posing by the sculptures and statues for photographs. One of the statues was that of the world in the shape of a ball split in half, with the Korean Peninsula in the middle. On either half of the ball were people trying to push the balls together so the two Koreas would fit back together.
“Peace on the Korean Peninsula is directly related to peace in the world. Consensus and support from the international community is essential,” the Mayor of Seoul, Park Won Soon, would tell us later at a dinner. The statue at the DMZ echoed his words.
We took the opportunity to take photos in the mockup of the 3rd Tunnel, a contraption built to replicate the original since cameras were not allowed in the tunnel. But that mock tunnel did not prepare me enough for the real thing when I eventually went in.
Finally into the briefing hall, we were shown the eight-minute video, with surround sound, chronicling the Korean War and the discovery of the 3rd Tunnel.
Apparently, undeterred by the intervention of the UN that prevented the North from overrunning the South, the North Koreans, even after the Armistice, were preparing for another invasion of the South. To achieve this, they dug tunnels, through which soldiers could pass to attack the South, targeting Seoul. Two tunnels were discovered before 1978. No one knew of the 3rd Tunnel, which happened to be the most threatening being just 44km away from Seoul, until a North Korean defector told the South he had engineered the project. The South Koreans started investigating and soon enough found the tunnel. They too dug underground and intercepted this tunnel, which had already encroached some 435 meters into the south side of the DMZ. An estimated 30, 000 men could pass through this within an hour. The discovery was another flashpoint between the two countries, even though the North denied any military purpose for the tunnel, claiming it was a coal mine.
“What they did,” one of the South Korean soldiers explained, “was that they painted the tunnel walls with coal to cover up their intentions, but analyses have shown that there is no possibility of coal in the area.”
As we prepared to head into the tunnel, warnings were issued. People with breathing problems or asthma were not encouraged to go in because oxygen levels are low. People with claustrophobia were also advised to stay out.
At the entrance, yellow constructions helmets are shelved on a rack and everyone going in is expected to wear one.
The interception tunnel goes in at a steep incline, so that one is almost forced to trot down. Though the floors are padded, it was an uncomfortable decent. But the actual tunnel was worse. It is supposed to measure 2 meters in height but in most places it is significantly less as the tunnel was roughly carved into hard rock. True enough, the rock was covered with coal, painted roughly on the walls. In some parts, metal scaffoldings have been built, either to support the tunnel walls from caving in or to prevent people from banging their heads against the walls. Either way, it made it even more challenging for people of certain heights to walk comfortably in the tunnel. Stooping and ambling down the inclines in dim light and low oxygen was challenging, and often, in places where the tunnel walls permitted, tall people often paused to straighten their backs and laugh at each other.
Several meters in, the tunnel comes to an abrupt end. The visitor is confronted by a huge concrete wall, about a meter or more thick, built by the South Koreans to prevent the North from making use of the tunnel. There were two others beyond that, built at intervals. There is no telling what the other walls look like because we couldn’t go beyond this; we were not allowed too. But in the wall, there is a tiny door, big enough for a dwarf to walk in, and a little window, through which one can peek into the darkness beyond. There is no light at the end of this tunnel.

Extremities
Walking back up to the surface, sitting down and watching tourists milling around the souvenir shop and making purchases, the contrast to home, to Nigeria, where military installations are guarded, even from Nigerians, as if they are the enemies, is stark. Where Nigeria has shied away from confronting the history and lessons of its civil war, the Koreans hold theirs in their hearts and in their faces to remind themselves and the world of what happened and what could still happen. And because they are smart, they are making money from it, drawing tourists to their war history.
But what will happen if war broke out? The tunnel alone is an indication of the length people would go to get at each other’s throat, and these are people from the same tribe, the same families.
Again, the words of the North Korean ambassador to Nigeria, Mr. Chol, echoes in my mind: “We want the world to know that we have what is worse than a H-bomb. And we are not afraid to use it,” he had said.
For some reason I thought of the laughing soldier on the back of the truck in that video, of what he would think of the two Koreas now, what he would think of the sacrifice he and his friends had made, if in retrospect they would make those sacrifices again. And then it occurred to me that perhaps he didn’t die in Korea and lived to be an old man, sitting by his TV watching the news about nuclear tests in Korea. His sacrifice, and all the others who fought in the Korean War, should have brought peace to the peninsula. For now though, peace is only as close as war is.