50 years of trip-wire weirdness end as US leaves Korean border

[emad]

Telegraph
By Richard Spencer,China Correspondent
(Filed: 02/11/2004)

The world's sole remaining Cold War frontier post lost its American guards yesterday when the United States withdrew from the demilitarised zone between North and South Korea.

Its abandonment of Panmunjom, the "truce village" of huts and observation posts that has been described as the weirdest as well as the most threatening settlement on earth, ends a 50-year history full of intrigue.

From now on, it will be manned just by the forces of the two Koreas, as the US reduces its 27,000-strong military in South Korea by a third.

Panmunjom owes its existence to the armistice that ended the Korean War in 1953. As the North refused to recognise the government of the South, the two remain technically at war.

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[donsu]

1. Hooray - it's way past time for the US to leave Korea

the Koreans, north and south, can handle their own business.

[chenGOD]

2. That's great...a small step.

They continue to delay the move of US troops out of Seoul, but this is a positive step. My older brother-in-law served up near Panmunjom and he said it was very tense all the time. My younger brother-in-law is doing his military reserve duty right now (all South Korean men must do reserve duty 3 days a year until they are 35 I think), but luckily he doesn't have to serve up in the DMZ. The suicide rate there is quite high among South Koreans (don't know about North Koreans).

If you want to see an interesting movie about the DMZ, try the South Korean movie "JSA" (Joint Security Area). Very well done. Or another good South Korean movie about the Korean war would be "Brotherhood" (that's the English title, in Korean it's "Taegukgi Hwinalrimyeo" (which means "Korean flag fluttering in the wind")).

Anyhow, it is a small positive step.

[NVMojo]

3. this is a big deal!