DMZ Freedom Bridge

This set of coin-operated binoculars is nearly identical to the set at Roadside Station Kadena, but the view is not over a fence but rather over a river. This is the Imjin River, and the observation platform is at Imjingak Resort, also known as Pyeonghwa Nuri Park. That the park’s official name in English includes the word “Resort” points to a odd layered quality of the attractions here, similar to how the museum and observation platform at Kadena are a familiar Japanese and usually much more anodyne convention familiar to travelers. You can travel to Imjingak Resort in a private car but most people come on organized tours, in buses. Many of the attractions require separate tickets, and tour companies offer packages with variations.

Imjingak has a facilities building with food court and bathrooms, but little in the way of museum exhibits beyond a turtle boat in the entry hall. Most of the things people come to look at are outside. They are other memorial, like the Mangbaedan. Artifacts like the train bridge destroyed in the war whose bullet scars the signs tell you to look for, the Freedom Bridge the POWs walked over in the exchange. Newer additions like the Korean comfort woman statue. Little ribbons tied to the fence. A gondola goes over the river to another attraction: the former US Army Camp Greaves, whose bowling alley is now a museum accessible with a gondola ticket.

Access to this observation platform is free, or was when I visited in May 2024, though I’ve seen travel bloggers post about it since then saying a ticket was required. We are not looking at another sovereignty as we were at Kadena, but rather at a zone of a different kind of compromised sovereignty. Just across the river is the civilian control zone, the X meter wide strip of land that extends on either side of the demilitarized zone. The CCZ is not demilitarized; South Korean troops train there. Villagers live and farm there. Standing here, we are still looking at South Korea, but over the river that marked a historic border.

Greaves was an Army base; the AF stayed far away from the DMZ. This was a base for ground troops. What did they do? How long were their tours of duty? Unaccompanied I assume. Would anyone have done a tour in both places? Greaves was very front-line. And existed only after the Korean War. Kadena was there before and played a key role in fighting that war.

. Describe the tour groups I saw. The train, the korean comfort women statue (the same as in Seoul across from the Japanese embassy which moved, finally, is the statue still there 2 years later? Maybe ask YQ to see). The gondola and how it goes to Greaves, discussed later in this poem. Link the history of Kadena to the history of the DMZ, a sketch: