Good fences(,24-hour surveillance, soldiers and government propaganda) make good neigbours.

This weekend I visited the DMZ-the DeMilitarized Zone. To say that it is anything more than an utter pathetic demonstration of the lowest form of humanity would be a compliment. I was clearly not impressed with the entire trip. Despite being an exceptionally lucrative business for both the South Korean and American government (and possibly the North Korean government too), the "huge" divide amongst supposed blood brothers is exploited and entrenched beyond measure! The imaginary 38th parallel line demarcating the two areas reminded me of a poem from High School-something Mr Jelley once taught us-that to this day I have never witnessed as blatantly and intentionally as this. Robert Frost's "Mending Wall" is a far more eloquent account of the DMZ than I will ever be able to write!

Here are a few selected lines:

He only says, "Good fences make good neighbours."
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
"Why do they make good neighbours? Isn't it
Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down."

These last two lines- are interesting especially when considering the DMZ- as one would expect there to be hatred towards the DMZ- a resentment and an outcry. But with time passing, the whitepickets spanning every 200m along the "wall" serve as a symbol of complacency and no longer a desire for looming unitedness. There was an eerieness about the DMZ, with soldiers staring at their reflections(minus the slight apparel difference) in the Joint Security Area only a mere 10-20metres away ready to open fire if any slight provocation should allow for it. And then, to be observing "the war" as first hand as us tourists did-felt like we were in nothing less than a lion cage in a zoo with an American Soldier barking orders at us as to protect us from the ferocious beasts that look nothing more daunting than my grade 4 boys only a little more grown up and wearing aviators.


Am I cycnical about this? YES. Why I had to ask myself? Because the entire notion of war baffles me: it inflicts innocent people's lives, divides families, creates imaginary boundaries and at the end of the day makes money out of it-the cheek!

As I stared out into the Alpine-post-card-like mountains of North Korea, I couldn't help but think that I my 70 US$ would have been far more beneficial to a family in North Korea suffering in this unbearable cold.

Such is life!