Trump couldn’t visit DMZ in Korea, but this Columbus resident did

After bad weather canceled President Donald Trump’s secretly planned visit last week to the Demilitarized Zone separating communist North Korea and democratic South Korea, a Columbus resident agreed to publicly share his story about visiting one of the world’s most dangerous borders.

During an interview with the Ledger-Enquirer in his home, retired U.S. Marine Corps Col. Rob St. Clair noted his March visit to the DMZ almost was canceled as well.

St. Clair, a Vietnam War veteran, frequently travels overseas to write and photograph stories for military publications. A few weeks before St. Clair on his two-week trip this past spring to South Korea, China and Japan, the half-brother of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un was assassinated in Malaysia, and all tours to the DMZ were closed. But when St. Clair arrived at his hotel in Seoul, a staff member told him, “You are so fortunate; they just reopened the tours this week.”

And three days after his visit, St. Clair learned, all tours to the DMZ again were suspended, this time because North Korea had fired a missile test.

“I was lucky to have this opportunity,” he realized.

Getting there

While in Seoul, the South Korean capital, St. Clair stayed in the Dragon Hill Lodge, an American-style resort, owned by the U.S. Department of Defense, for those with military ID and their families. From there, twice weekly tours are offered for the 35-mile trip north to the DMZ and then to the Joint Security Area, as close as 20 feet away from North Korea and where South Koreans are forbidden to visit.

St. Clair, president of the Columbus Artists’ Guild and president of the Muscogee County Friends of Libraries, said he was told that American civilians can visit the DMZ but only active-duty military, retirees and their families or other federal employees can visit the JSA.

North Korea and South Korea are still officially at war 64 years after their ceasefire because they haven’t signed a peace treaty. The DMZ is 160 miles long, running roughly along the 38^th Parallel and strewn with mines. The DMZ also is 2.5 miles wide, with 1.25 miles on either side.

In the middle of the DMZ is Panmunjom, a former village about a half-mile in diameter and now called the JSA, controlled by the United Nations. Diplomats meet there, and rotating soldiers from the North and South face each other while silently standing guard across the street bisected by the Military Demarcation Line.

St. Clair went from the lodge on a bus with 44 other military tourists for their daylong roundtrip and visit to the DMZ. They stopped at the Civilian Control Point, which has a museum and an observation area about 5 miles away from the border. Then they went farther north to the JSA.

Bucket list

Photos supposedly aren’t allowed to be taken in the JSA, St. Clair said, “but if you’re taking one, it’s because a soldier is kind of giving you the nod like, ‘Go ahead. I just don’t want to see it.’”

The JSA contains the famous conference room where the armistice was signed in 1953.

“As you walk around to the north side of the table, probably about 12 feet long, you are in North Korea,” St. Clair said with a smile. “That’s checked off my bucket list.”

The table also is the site of the legendary 11-hour meeting between the North and South Korean officials. It’s known as the “Battle of the Bladders” -- because nobody asked for a bathroom break, not wanting to appear weak.

Such a mindset still pervades the atmosphere at the JSA. “It’s all intimidation,” St. Clair said.

For example, South Korea once added a balcony on its headquarters there, he said, so North Korea added a higher one on its headquarters.

But for all the militarization along the border, the nexus where the two sides have their closest contact is oddly open – no wall, no fence, no barricade, just a street.

“It’s all within 50 yards of each other or even closer,” St. Clair said. “When we were standing on the street and getting ready to go into the U.N. buildings, you can look across and see the North Korean guards. And they’ll go, ‘Yep, that’s Bob. No, maybe that’s Larry today,’ and they’ll make a little joke out of it.’”

But the situation is deadly serious. The guards stand at attention for 12-hour shifts, and they mean business. The tour guide for St. Clair’s group warned against making any provocative comments or actions toward the North Koreans.

“If you do something, a gesture or something else that might be offensive, you don’t know what’s going to happen,” he said. “It’s a powder keg. As long as everybody follows the rules and follows protocol, we’ll be fine.”

But you can stare, which St. Clair did at one of the four or five guards within sight while he was 20 yards away from them.

“You get somebody who’s just basically staring back with a look of hostility but not anything to back it up,” he said. “… I don’t want to make it more dramatic than it was. It was interesting just to see the other side and how they present themselves.”

Perhaps the most infamous clash at the border came in 1976 and is known as the “Axe Murder Incident.” According to a summary at politico.com, approximately 20 North Korean soldiers attacked a squad of five South Korean civil service personnel and a 13-man U.N. unit, led by two Americans, who were trimming a poplar tree blocking the view between two guard posts. The two Americans died.

So, considering the bellicose words between Trump and Kim, St. Clair was relieved to read that the U.S. president wouldn’t visit the DMZ.

“It’s just not worth the time for the potential problems that you could have there, especially today,” he said. “Maybe with the previous president, a little more ceremony would have been different. But today, it would have been a lot more tense up there.”

Beyond the stares

Although the tourists see only a few Korean soldiers, St. Clair estimated both sides have 200 soldiers in the JSA at any given time.

“They look like they’re bored,” St. Clair said with a chuckle then continued in a serious tone. “You don’t feel the tension as much as you would imagine. They’ve done a good job of keeping the peace in the sense that, as long as everything goes the way we planned, there’s not going to be any problems.”

As he gazed at the North Korean soldiers, St. Clair recalled, “You really kind of feel bad for them. You know they have no electricity hardly at all over there. You know how hard the living conditions are.”

A company of American soldiers and some U.N. soldiers also are in the JSA, St. Clair said. “When I was up there,” he said, “I easily saw maybe 20 American soldiers and another half-dozen U.N. soldiers.”

St. Clair toured one of the tunnels the North Koreans built to infiltrate South Korea. It’s approximately 1 mile long, 6 feet wide and 6 feet high.

“You go down at least 100 yards,” he said. “It’s lit the entire way. It’s interesting to see how big it is, how well preserved it is. It’s just amazing. … You could probably get 30,000 combat troops through that tunnel within an hour’s period of time.”

The DMZ also contains the “Bridge of No Return,” a wooden pedestrian bridge connecting the North and South. It was used for prisoner exchanges. Another bridge in the DMZ is Imjingang Bridge, a closed railroad bridge also known as “Freedom Bridge.” South Koreans decorate the bridge with brightly colored ribbons carrying messages for family members in the North.

Despite the military threat, St. Clair said, the South Koreans in Seoul don’t seem preoccupied about it. “You don’t feel any tension from the people living there,” he said. “Everything going on with North Korea, they just, ‘Pffft. We’ve been living with this for almost 65 years.’”

Asked what the typical American doesn’t appreciate about the situation in Korea, St. Clair said, “There’s kind of a sympathy when you realize that you go from Seoul, the fourth-largest city in the world and how well it’s developed, and then to stand there (in the DMZ) and look into a country that you know is so deprived of everything.

“… The Korean War is fascinating, how it came about and how it ended and what’s happened since then. I can’t believe that 65 years have gone by and nothing’s been resolved.”

Perspective

St. Clair recalled a conversation he had with a woman in South Korea. Her father had emigrated with his wife from the North to the South before the war, leaving their parents and siblings behind.

“They’re still there,” he said. “They want to reunite their families. … There’s a real sense of loss there.”

A comment from a U.S soldier, married to a South Korean and on his third tour in the DMZ, was even more eye-opening.

“It’s not going to be the North that invades the South,” St. Clair recalled the soldier telling him. “It’s going to be the South that gets tired of the threats and the potential for a nuclear confrontation, and the South’s going to invade the North. … If I was a betting man, I wouldn’t be surprised if something like that happens within the next two or three years.”

Prompting that conclusion, St. Clair said, is “the sense that somebody’s got to finally end this thing. How long do we live under this cloud of what’s going to happen and who’s going to fire a missile? Why don’t we just end it?”

Asked whether he believes that, St. Clair hesitated and said, “I don’t know. I think any type of invasion by the South would be so complicated with what you want to accomplish and how quickly you can do it.”

St. Clair called South Korea “a beautiful country. It’s very prosperous. It’s amazing how well they’re doing. The young people don’t care much about the war. They care about Wi-Fi and the newest technology. But they live under this veil of threat.”

Visiting the border, St. Clair said, “makes you appreciate how significant it is. What you read in the paper, it’s easy to say, ‘That’s fine. What’s next? Where’s the sports page?’ But when you’re actually there, it makes you think about the significance of what if. What if this happens? Then you think the whole world would change if there’s an invasion because it would spread so many places. It would have global implications.”

In an essay about his visit to the DMZ, St. Clair wrote, “The tour leaves one with the impression of how easy it is to spark an international incident with unknown repercussions. But for those who enjoy military history, it’s an opportunity to walk the ground where historic figures brought an end to America’s ‘Forgotten War.’”

This story was originally published November 11, 2017 at 9:00 PM with the headline "Trump couldn’t visit DMZ in Korea, but this Columbus resident did."