Fences

A DMZ fence (actually, two fences).. Photographed from my car while driving along a stretch of the ‘Freedom Highway’ not far from my home where the DMZ’s southern limit borders the South Korean mainland.. Across the Han estuary is North Korea.

I live near a fence - actually, several fences - that have been erected to defend South Korea from North Korean aggression. People have asked if the current terrible escalation in the conflict between Hamas and the state of Israel, which began when Hamas forces breached the fence dividing Gaza from Israel, has provoked in me any specific reactions concerning the wisdom of living near a border separating sworn enemies - in close proximity to what Bill Clinton once called “the most dangerous place on Earth”.

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Obviously, there are major physical, contextual, historical, and ethical differences between the Gaza fence and the DMZ fence. For example, the Gaza fence isn’t a national border. It’s a stop-gap measure first devised by Israel in 1994 to serve as a security barrier, and is one physical dimension of the wider confrontation with Palestinians seeking their own state. Specifically, the 60 kilometer-long fence was erected to protect Israeli citizens from Hamas attacks,  the militant faction of the Palestinian leadership that controls the Gaza Strip and has declared itself willing to do whatever it takes to reclaim all of Palestine from Israel. The Korean Demilitarized Zone was also a stop-gap measure created in 1953 at the cessation of hostilities between the two belligerent versions of modern-day Korea. As a peace treaty wasn’t signed, the DMZ was intended to make a new invasion by either side as difficult as possible, thereby guaranteeing a higher degree of security for the citizens of both Koreas, who belong to states that are rival claimants to the legitimate rule of the entire Korean peninsula.

Physically, there are major differences between the two fences.  The latest and most formidable version of the Gaza fence, the so-called ‘Iron Wall’, was completed in 2021. As the Washington Post wrote on October 10th:

The project was publicly announced in 2016 after Hamas used underground tunnels to attack Israeli forces in the 2014 war. It required more than 140,000 tons of iron and steel, according to Reuters, and the installation of hundreds of cameras, radars and sensors. Access near the fence on the Gaza side was limited to farmers on foot. On the Israeli side, observation towers and sand dunes were put in place to monitor threats and slow intruders.

Disastrously, however, as we now all know, on October 7th this ‘Iron Wall’ was rather easily breached at 29 points, and Hamas fighters encountered little resistance from the IDF once they were through because most of  its units were deployed  to control unrest on the West Bank, and so were able to go on a murderous rampage.  Israel was obviously far too confident that one 20-foot-high fence with a concrete base, observation towers, obstructive sand dunes, and advanced surveillance technology would offer sufficient protection for its citizens. As the Washington Post reported, Matthew Levitt, director of the counter-terrorism program at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, remarked sanguinely: “It’s still just a fence. A big fence, but just a fence.” The Israelis were well aware that a proportion of the people on the other side of this fence were committed to extreme violence to achieve their goal, which is nothing less than the annihilation of the state of Israel. Furthermore, the fence effectively turned Gaza into an open-air prison, thereby inevitably stoking the fires of anger, frustration, and resentment. It was clearly wishful thinking on Israel’s part to believe a fence would provide viable security, and a massive strategic blunder that has had tragic consequences.

At 248 kilometers long, the DMZ possesses the world’s longest barbed-wire fence.  But if it was only one tall and long fence – even a fence augmented by watchtowers and surveillance technology -  people in South Korea wouldn’t feel as secure as they do and for so long. In fact, there are multiple fences on both sides of the official border, which is called the Military Demarcation Line (MDL) that runs down the middle of a  wide buffer zone no-man’s-land between the two Koreas. This is four kilometer wide – 2 kilometers on both sides - and neither the North nor the South Korean armies are permitted within this zone, which is patrolled by the UN, who cautiously avoid stepping on or driving over the one million plus landmines buried within.  Sometimes, due to natural topographic barriers, such as bodies of water – for example, on Ganghwa Island, which I mentioned visiting in a recent post, or next to the highway along which I was driving in the photograph illustrating this past - the width of the DMZ narrows. Some areas, like near where we live,  have double or triple fences and layers of concertina wire. But this isn’t all: there’s also the Civilian Control Zone (CCZ), a stretch of land that lies between the DMZ and the Civilian Control Line (CCL) which restricts public access in areas  of South Korea adjacent to the DMZ. In some areas, the CCL stretches 10km south of the MDL. On the other side of the border, North Korea has similar multiple layers of defense.

The DMZ. Note how close Seoul is to the border. The photograph at the beginning of this post was taken in a region to the northwest of Seoul, next to the sea. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Demilitarized_Zone#/media

But even with this impressive barrier in place, intrepid people from both sides have still tried to get through – or under – the DMZ since 1953. There are four incursion tunnels dug by the North which South Korea know about, but it is believed there are as many as twenty more undiscovered ones! The so-called Third Tunnel is quite near us. It was located in 1978 in an incomplete state and is 1,635 meters long. Perhaps because it’s so close, I haven’t visited it, but I have gone down the Second Tunnel, which is  further north-east near the town of Cheorwon. Here, because the tunnel is very cramped, you must wear a protective helmet, and as I’m tall  it was quite a squeeze for me. For North Korean male soldiers, who (as I mentioned in a previous post) now have an average height that is as much as 8cm shorter than their South Korean counterparts, it would  no doubt have been somewhat easier going. This tunnel was revealed in early 1975 by  South Korean guards  who heard the sound of explosions deep underground. The total length is 3.5km. 

But amazingly, people can even successfully cross the DMZ above ground. Not so long ago, a North Korean soldier defected by swimming one stretch. On February 17th 2021 the Korea Herald noted:

The Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) announced, Tuesday, that the North Korean was caught in the Civilian Control Line (CCL) in the eastern border town of Goseong, Gangwon Province, earlier that day…… The JCS added that he likely swam south near the Unification Observatory and passed through a drainage tunnel located at the bottom of an iron fence on the inter-Korean border.

Even though surveillance cameras spotted the North Korean multiple times after he came ashore, the military failed to take appropriate action, while the drainage tunnel was also poorly equipped to prevent infiltrations. The North Korean was taken into custody following a three-hour manhunt after he was first spotted by surveillance cameras at a checkpoint. He is currently being questioned by investigators. The man in his 20s reportedly expressed an intention to defect to the South.

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The DMZ and the Gaza fence are present-day descendants of historical physical obstructions or barriers that were erected in attempts to secure and maintain regions of peace in times of endemic and internecine war. The most famous of all is, of course, the Great Wall of China, which is over 21, 000 kilometers long and was began over 3000 years ago.  Its function was to keep out miscellaneous ‘barbarians.’ In Britain, in the north of the country bordering what is now Scotland, we have the remnants of Hadrian’s Wall, which is approximately 140 kilometers long and was constructed about 2000 years ago to protect the inhabitants of the Roman province of Britannia.

Like these ancient walls (back then, metal fences weren’t an option),  the Gaza fence and the DMZ are ostensibly defensive. They have been built to increase the possibilities of peaceful existence for the builders and the people under their jurisdiction in situations where neighbours are regularly intent on violent incursion or full-scale invasion. The Gaza fence was meant to protect Israel against militant insurgencies from Gaza, while the DMZ defends citizens of both North and South Korea against attack.

But the situations are actually more complex in both instances. As already noted, an additional consequence of the Gaza fence was to turn the Gaza Strip into an open-air prison for those living on the inside. The tragically fatal flaw that led to the  breaching of Israel’s ‘Iron Wall’ was that it is actually also offensive, a weapon of destruction in the form of an obstruction. The DMZ, meanwhile, has permitted the leaders of North Korea to turn their country into an open-air prison for its citizens. In fact, for some time now, the DMZ looks more like a barrier erected to  prevent the free movement of North Koreans -  like the Berlin Wall was for East Germans – rather than one that protects North Korea from invasion.

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Thanks to Hamas barbarism and now Israel’s vengeful response, we’ve all be reminded that given the chance, homo homini lupus est: man is wolf to man. Which is one way of explaining why, unfortunately, we will always need long tall fences.

NOTES

The Washington Post article can be read at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/10/10/how-hamas-entered-israel/

The Korea Herald article can be read at: https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/nation/2023/10/113_304191.html

The map of the DMZ is from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Demilitarized_Zone#/media

For my previous blog post on Ganghwa Island and the DMZ, see: https://www.simonmorley-blog.com/blog-1/a-view-of-the-north

For my previous blog post on the average height of Koreans, see: https://www.simonmorley-blog.com/blog-1/a-nation-of-racist-dwarfs