Tunnel Vision

A few years ago, with the guidance of an American Sergeant Major, I had the opportunity to enter the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), a two and a half mile strip of largely unoccupied land that serves as a buffer between North and South Korea. Roughly straddling the 38th parallel, the DMZ runs across the entire Korean Peninsula, and the only structures in the zone are two “peace villages” (requiring very special permission to live there, although we believe that the North’s village is simply an unoccupied series of building facades) and a meeting place – a “truce village” named P’anmunjom – where the armistice that suspended the Korean War in 1953 was negotiated. The rest of the territory has become a wildlife preserve.

I was able both to walk around the negotiating table in the main meeting room, right smack across that 38th parallel, literally spending a scary 15 seconds effectively on the North Korean side. I was regaled with stories of how American soldiers, on duty in that building, were surprised by soldiers from the North who overwhelmed them and sliced their throats. Right where I was standing. That the DMZ is a scant 25 miles from the edge of South Korea’s largest city, the capital, Seoul, makes what I will described next even more alarming.

When the North began tunneling through the DMZ, their first effort was an easily discovered just beneath the surface. Their next efforts (we’ve located three of these) were vastly more sophisticated, passing through tons of solid granite, 250 feet under the surface (picture a 25 story building turned upside down) at its lowest point. I actually took a tram down one tunnel and back again; it was amazing. I had to wonder how the North was ever able to build those secret tunnels, capable of moving 25,000 soldiers an hour (and maybe a small military vehicle) from North to South, without quickly being detected. Dynamite was the only really viable tool. The answer is both stunning and brilliant. The North perfectly coordinated surface bombing and artillery practice with each dynamite blast in a tunnel. Wow!

At one time, a train passed through the zone, and before the recent escalation in tensions, trucks carried raw materials and partially assembled parts (trucks transferred cargos at the border after being carefully weighed and inspected) from South to North for cheap labor. Trucks coming back the other way brought the processed goods back to the South. Every week, an armored car filled with US currency, drove across into the North to provide Kim Jong Un with the money he needed to continue his lifestyle. Sanctions and increased hostilities ended that practice, but who knows what the future will bring.

Apparently, Master Kim’s hacking operatives have figured out how to loot Western and South Korean banking clientele and other financial depositories, especially those with massive accumulations of bitcoins and other virtual currencies, to more than replace those lost funds. “A recent string of heists on South Korean cryptocurrency exchanges, carried about in attacks that bear the signature of Pyongyang’s hackers, have coincided with a dramatic rally in the bitcoin market. On Monday, a South Korean official blamed the North for stealing billions of won in cryptocurrency last year from South Korean exchanges, partly through malware-laden spear-phishing emails… One email campaign that began last October targeted victims using the lure of a job opening for the role of CFO at a European-based cryptocurrency company, said IT security firm Secureworks.

“On December 19, a few days after bitcoin reached a record high near $20,000, a South Korean cryptocurrency exchange called Youbit reported that it suddenly lost roughly 17% of its digital coin holdings. The exchange, which had also been targeted in April, when hackers linked to North Korea stole some 4,000 bitcoin–now valued at about $36 million and worth more than twice that at the peak of the bitcoin boom, was forced to declare bankruptcy. While Pyongyang continues to deny that it plays any role in cyberattacks, including the Sony hack, the Youbit heists were quickly linked to North Korea.

“South Korea is also investigating whether its northern neighbor is linked to the recent $523 million theft from Japanese cryptocurrency exchange Coincheck–the country’s largest such digital currency exchange hack–due to similarities with other recent heists, Bloomberg reported on Monday, citing an unnamed South Korean lawmaker.

“Hampered by its resource-strapped economy and international sanctions, Pyongyang has long sought unorthodox ways to bring in funds, including counterfeiting and illicit drug sales. Cryptocurrencies like bitcoin–or other, harder-to-trace digital currencies like monero–could help the North evade tightening sanctions, by avoiding conventional banking systems and adding layers of anonymity and plausible deniability to its transactions. Government officials in Russia and Venezuela have said that cryptocurrencies could help their countries bypass controls on money flows in and out of their countries.” FastCompany.com, February 6th.

As the Olympics continue just a few miles south of Seoul, in the shadow of Donald Trump’s existential military threats against the man he calls “little rocket man” – always amplified and reciprocate by Kim Jong Un – I wondered how things might have changed at the DMZ. “Some 40 miles from the Olympic celebrations, the DMZ separating North and South remains in a state of high anxiety… South Korean soldiers stand behind a barricade at Tong-Il Bridge, which crosses the Imjin River and leads to the United Nations Command camp in the Demilitarized Zone between the two Koreas… Cmdr. Robert Watt is the Canadian chief of staff of the United Nations Command.

“The aging, two-story blue structure stands just across the eerie border separating North and South Korea, inside the broader [DMZ] buffer … The building has a military telephone, set up so that international troops under the United States’ command can relay messages to their North Korean adversaries in the hope of avoiding any unintended conflict.

“‘They haven’t answered since 2013,’ said Cmdr. Robert Watt, a scruffy Canadian military officer who helps U.S.-led forces keep the peace here. ‘We’ve resorted to calling out, essentially, with a bullhorn.’” Los Angeles Times, February 15th. Those South Korean soldiers, all with the highest degree of military and martial arts training, stand motionless for hours in a martial arts stance, their reflective dark glasses hiding exactly where their eyes are focused. No matter what they are guarding (left above). North Korean soldiers, undoubtedly with equal training, stare back often in reciprocal rigidity or take pictures (right above).

But the ceasefire was an armistice, not a peace treaty. The North and the South (with the United States and other Western powers under the aegis of the United Nations) are still technically at war, and when you are at the DMZ, you can just feel the tension. “To enter [that DMZ ‘truce village’], vehicles from the South pass over the Tong-il Bridge, which crosses the Imjin River, a site of some of the brutal battles that marked the civil war that ended in 1953. There’s an imposing security checkpoint, blocked by black-and-yellow road barriers, on the way in to Camp Bonifas — a military base named for an American officer who was one of two U.S. soldiers killed with an ax by North Korean soldiers in 1976 as he supervised the pruning of a poplar tree that blocked guards’ view… North Koreans said the tree had been planted by their nation’s founder, Kim Il-Sung.

“A focal point is a central hut known simply as ‘T-2,’ a place envisioned six decades ago as a temporary home for high-level military talks after the Korean War. When U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson toured the compound last year, a North Korean guard peered inside the dust-covered windows on his side of the building.

“In winter, footprints are sometimes visible in the snow outside the building’s perimeter, even if the North’s guards can’t be seen… Inside, there’s a deep-brown rectangular conference table, an equal number of chairs placed on each side of the border.

“A United Nations command flag stands in the middle, and a blue door with three brass locks leads out one side to the North… Exiting the wrong door could be a potentially fatal mistake… Those in charge from the South know the risks, shouting instructions to visitors to remain in line, avoid hand gestures or loud comments and not to take photographs in the direction of secret installations, such as the building that houses the neglected telephone line.

“‘The U.N. is not here in a peacekeeping capacity,’ Watt, a tall man with a thick red beard who wears a muskrat-trimmed cap, told a recent tour group of international journalists. ‘We are here to combat the North Koreans.’” LA Times.

Add nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missiles on both sides, and you feel the military tension where war stares back at everyone who enters the DMZ. It is all too easy to image a real, full-blown war breaking out at any minute. Makes you want everyone involved in escalating the tensions to knock it down a notch. Kim Jong Un is only doing what the North has done since the 1953 armistice. Donald Trump has increased the rhetoric on our side, however. Let’s hope that the rapprochement that began between the two Koreas at the Olympics takes root… and soon.

I’m Peter Dekom, and playing with threats and nuclear weapons is just begging for an accident that starts a war where hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of people die needlessly.