the door to North Korea

Can’t remember if I posted this photo before, but I have it up on Facebook now, and it’s an interesting one. Here I am standing at the Korean Demilitarized Zone with a South Korean soldier, in June 2007 on my Korean stopover from Tokyo back to Cairo.

You can be photographed with the soldiers, obviously, but are not allowed to engage them in conversation. The conference room where we are standing has a line painted down the middle that is the actual border between North and South. Since we are at the door to the North, I am technically trespassing on North Korean soil in this photo, and could be jailed if captured for however long North Korea may have wished. So, before visitors are allowed into the room, a couple of South Korean soldiers enter and lock the door to the North.

I’m wearing a U.N. badge, because technically that’s whose supervision I was under. The earpiece is required as a method of emergency communication between the group leader and all of us. The oddest rule at the DMZ is the absolute ban on waving or pointing. The claim was that North Korea airbrushes such photos to show visitors giving them the middle finger, to be used for propaganda purposes.