North and South Korea remain as divided as ever, 70 years after truce

North Korea’s communications with the South and the UN Command have dwindled in recent years, with Covid-19 further encouraging its retreat from in-person meetings

It’s become harder to keep the peace and ‘reduce the chance of something untoward happening’, says a member of the UN Command Military Armistice Commission

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The so-called Demilitarised Zone (DMZ) separates North and South Korea. Photo: AFP

Published: 4:00pm, 19 Feb 2023

On the Imjin River, which crosses the heavily guarded demilitarised zone (DMZ) – the buffer area between the two Koreas – layers of ice were visible, a neat metaphor for hostilities between the two sides which have been largely frozen for 70 years.

No North Korean troops were seen on their side of the 245-kilometre (152-mile) Military Demarcation Line, the border marking the Korean war battlefront in 1953, when North Korea, China and the US-led United Nations Command finally signed an armistice to end active conflict.

North Korean soldiers have become a rare sight since the global outbreak of Covid-19. To ward off the virus they have avoided showing up, to the extent of suspending regular in-person talks with the UN Command.

“They no longer meet with us face to face,” said Lieutenant Colonel Griff Hofman of the UN Command Military Armistice Commission.

He was speaking on February 7 next to sky-blue huts in the commission-managed Joint Security Area near Panmunjom, a now non-existent village where a long and painstaking truce conference took place seven decades ago.

“It’s all done via the hotline, and they generally stay in Panmungak,” he said, referring to the main building on the North Korean side of the area, also known as the Phanmun Pavilion. “If North Korean troops needed to go outdoors, they wore hazmat suits.”