Joint Security Area (JSA)
The Bridge of No Return, crossing the Military Demarcation Line (MDL) materialized by the rusted panel on the left of the picture
Located in the “truce village” of Panmunjeom, roughly 65 km north of Seoul, the Joint Security Area is probably the best-known place in the Korean demilitarized zone (DMZ).
Here, North and South Korean forces stand face-to-face without any border fence separating them. The conscripts from the South (rumor has it they're selected for their physical beauty to impress their northern counterparts) adopt strange taekwondo-like postures, while those in the north are usually older and have a more relaxed attitude.
The main buildings, the Panmungak in the north and the Freedom House in the south, round 100 metres apart, are linked by one of the 33 existing inter-Korean hotlines used for north-south communications. This telephone line used to be tested twice a day except during weekends and public holidays (the South called the North on odd dates, while on even dates it was the other way around). However, North Korea has not picked up the phone since August 2021, in protest against joint South Korea-U.S. military exercises.
A TV screen installed in the Visitors' centre at Camp Bonifas broadcasts live images of the Panmungak, the main North Korean building of the JSA, and of the lone sentinel - nicknamed ‘Bob’ by the soldiers on the South side - who stands guard at all times, binoculars in hand (October 2024).
The JSA has been the scene of all kind of weird things. An unlikely meeting between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and U.S. president Donald Trump happened here in 2019. As well as a dramatic defection of a North Korean man, Oh Chong Son, two years earlier (the poor guy was badly injured during his attempt, rescued by the South Koreans, freed from intestinal worms up to 27 cm long during surgery - a consequence of North Korea's use of human excrement as fertilizer - and finally arrested for drunk driving after failing to integrate in South Korea a few years later).
In 1984, a translator from the Soviet embassy in Pyongyang, Vasily Matuzok, ran suddenly across the border while on a DMZ tour from the North, triggering a 40 minute gunfight that left one South Korean and three North Korean soldiers dead. Twenty minutes after the end of the battle, several gun shots were heard in the north. It is believed that the North Korean JSA commander and one of his deputies were summarily executed by their political commissioners for failing to prevent the defection.
So hey, this place is no joke.
A New Zealand officer briefs a group of tourists at the JSA Visitor Center in Camp Bonifas, a United Nations Command (UNC) military post located 400 meters south of the DMZ, in October 2024.
The blue and grey huts straddle the military demarcation line, and were used as meeting rooms when North and South still spoke to each other, which is no longer the case. Visiting one of these huts means technically stepping into North Korea, as the border crosses the negotiations table. A South Korean soldier guards the north door at all times in case a tourist is tempted to do something stupid.
Established by the Armistice Agreement of 1953, the JSA was originally a neutral territory where soldiers from both sides could move freely and where firearms were theoretically banned. Since August 1976, when two American servicemen were murdered with axes during a clash with the North Koreans, everyone has remained on their own side of the demarcation line. This meant that the North Korean part of the JSA suddenly found itself cut from the rest of the country, its only access until then being via the bridge of no return (i.e. via the southern part of the JSA). The North rushed to build a replacement structure on its side that was named the 72-hour Bridge because that was the time in which it was hastily constructed. People from the North now enter the JSA via this bridge.
The JSA was also where the massive prisoner exchanges took place at the end of the Korean War, across the Bridge of No Return that spans a stream marking the border. The name originates from the final ultimatum that was given to the prisoners about to be repatriated: they could either remain in the country of their captivity, or cross the bridge to return to their homeland. However, once they chose to cross the bridge, they would never be allowed to return.
At either side of the bridge are guard posts of the respective countries. The North Korean one is called KPA#4 while the United Nations Command checkpoint was called CP#3. It was abandoned in the mid-1980s after numerous attempts from the North Koreans to grab UNC personnel from it and drag them across the bridge into their territory. Because of this permanent abduction threat and its proximity to the North, the CP#3 was referred to as "The Loneliest Outpost in the World".
I first visited the JSA in November 2005, with a group of Japanese tourists. From their main building, the Panmungak, the North Koreans watched us closely with binoculars. A group of Chinese were touring the north side that day too. There was also a bunch of North Korean soldiers and a guy in communist-style civilian clothes lurking in the bushes a few meters north of the border. The atmosphere was really strange.
One of my military friends in Seoul has described the JSA as a “circus”. It certainly is, but it's also one of the most bizarre places in the world, and a visit to it leaves a lasting impression on anyone lucky enough to experience it.
Guided tours of the JSA were the only way for civilians to get inside the real demilitarized zone. You had to sign a waiver warning that you were “entering a hostile area with the possibility of injury or death as a direct result of enemy action”, which, of course, was part of the “fun”…
Up to 100,000 tourists visited the JSA every year. But as I write, none of the so-called “DMZ tours” really crosses into the DMZ any more, and the JSA is definitely off-limits to regular tourists.
Interrupted during the pandemic, the JSA tours briefly resumed in 2023, but only for US soldiers stationed in South Korea and their families and friends. They were suspended for good in July that year after a U.S. serviceman in trouble with the law, Travis King, ran away from his group to defect to North Korea. He was deported back to the U.S. after a couple of months.
After this incident, and given the rise in North-South tensions and the fact that North Koreans in the JSA are now armed again, it's not certain that this totally surreal place will be accessible to ordinary civilians ever again.
Joint Security Area is also the title of an excellent movie by South Korean director Park Chan-wook. If you can’t get to the actual JSA, please Watch it !
