Beyond the 38th Parallel

Crossing the Yalu River from China into North Korea is like entering a Cold War newsreel.

Portraits of Lenin and Marx hang alongside those of the Great and Dear Leaders. Grandiose architecture and colossal monuments stand triumphant over dull grey cities. Social realist artwork and communist slogans provide a splash of colour to this otherwise colourless scenery. Goose stepping soldiers parade military hardware through the streets in a demonstration of force. The ‘Hammer & Sickle’ flutters above buildings, and strains of marshalling music fill the air. Only this is no newsreel archive it is present day North Korea beyond the 38th Parallel, on the Cold War’s final frontline.

North Korea is another world, a communist time warp. The government controls all forms of information gathering and mass communications. No one can leave the country and no one wants to go there, except for a few arms dealers, drug traffickers and eccentric tourists. Cut off from the rest of the world reality is defined by the government. However reality in North Korea is not how we know it.

North Korea is a pretender to the throne of military super power, however with the fifth largest army in the world, nuclear capabilities and ballistic missiles that can reach the continental United States, this claim is not entirely unfounded. This is probably the closest reality inside and outside North Korea come together, their presence can be felt everywhere but most keenly at the DMZ.

It is here that the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea, confronts its adversary the Republic of Korea, one a high tech modern capitalist state, the other an anachronistic anomaly in the 21st century.