DMZ, Part II

We also got to look out the bus window at the famed "Bridge of No Return" which POWs from both sides crossed during postwar repatriation. Seeing the actual bridge, both in picture and in person, isn't as exciting as you want it to be, or anything close to its depiction in Die Another Day.

At another stop on the tour we got to see, from afar, the closest villages on either side of the DMZ, both fairly ridiculous in their own right, set up for the sole purpose of creating a tantalizing image of what greatness lies across the divide. A pissing contest of sorts, this led to the creation of the world's tallest flagpole (525 ft.) and heaviest flag (600 lbs.) in the North Korean village, and years of loudspeakers blasting praise for the Dear Leader from one side and pop music from the other. Both of these villages have actual Korean names, (and both ending in "-dong", teehee!), but the American military has nicknames for them; the North Korean village is called "Propaganda Village", so that you understand it's merely a propaganda campaign, and the South Korean village is called "Freedom Village", so that you understand it's a well-meaning propaganda campaign. Inhabitants of Freedom Village are paid handsomely for their residence, though they are subject to a nightly 11pm curfew and other restrictions. According to our guide, Propaganda Village contains no residents whatsoever, other than people employed to turn lights on and off.

The strangest part of this tour came near the end when we watched a fifteen minute video summarizing the history of the DMZ. It attempted to depict the DMZ as an inspirational symbol of peace in the world, emphasizing, among other things, the variety of wildlife inhabiting it. The video began and ended with staged footage of a Korean girl first crying, then happily playing, near a dividing fence, and contained an animated sequence with a butterfly fluttering about, making park benches appear and dividing markers disappear. Having seen the military-manned and otherwise barren wasteland containing no wildlife and little more than still-active landmines less than an hour earlier with our own eyes, the people sitting near me during the video were just as "WTF" baffled by this as I was. I wanted to cry Orwell! Orwell! but even that didn't seem to fit, since the combination of timing and ridiculousness of the material left no chance of its intended audience taking it seriously.

As far as I can tell, the video had something to do with South Korea's intentions to forge closer ties with their Northern counterparts, as the President had just returned from a summit with Kim Jong Il in which they initiated a new peace declaration the day before I went on this tour. South Korean sentiment over this new friendliness toward the North is generally mixed. These guys, however, demonstrating outside a government building in Seoul, were decidedly against it:

Update!
This post was supposed to conclude with video footage of some really angry protesters I saw in Seoul the day before I went on this tour, but after several attempts I've given up trying to upload it. My apologies to any readers that actually made it this far. (Mom?)

Update!
Here's the much anticipated video. Upon rewatching it, I guess they're actually rather orderly protesters.