Photos

While I was working in Seoul (and why else would I go to Korea in January?), I took a UN tour up to Panmunjom, the town on the border between North and South Korea where the armistice talks were held, and which is still used to this day for meetings between the two sides (which, having never signed a peace treaty, are still technically at war). It has been called the most dangerous border in the world (though I can think of several better candidates these days), and it is certainly the most paranoid.

We were shown into this quonset hut, which sits on the line between the two countries. The main table is exactly on the border, and there are microphones laid out so that their cables are exactly on the line. The microphones are on 24 hours a day, monitored by both sides, so we were cautioned to be careful what we said while we inside the building. Our group was arranged around the table, and everyone got a chance to stand on each side of it, which means that, as I took this picture, I was standing in North Korea. As long as I stayed inside the building - and the guard you see here was there to make sure we did - I could walk back into South Korea. But if I walked out the northern door, I could not go back.

The flags on the table have a story. You can see the North Korean flag here, and the tip of the UN flagpole to its left. The North Korean decorative tip is slightly larger, while the bases (out of sight) are also different; one has three steps, and the other has two. The flags, if I recall, are exactly the same size.

These measurements are by agreement; when the armistice talks first started, each side entered the room with its flag, and with each round the flags got bigger and bigger, until they scraped the ceiling. So the negotiators spent several sessions working out the arrangement that resulted in the flags you see here. All this while the fighting was going on.

The guard is North Korean, and I have no explanation for why one of his epaulets is slipping.

Technical: Kodachrome, digitized. Noiseware to cut the digitizing noise and restore sharpness. Cropped to vertical. Some burning at the base of the flag. Then I selected the window area and lowered the brightness a bit. Finally I smudged the area around the top of the guard's shoulders using a 6 pixel brush at high mag, to get rid of an artifact line.