Last week, Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott visited the De-Militarized Zone (DMZ) between North and South Korea. Here’s The Sydney Morning Herald‘s Philip Coorey reporting on Abbott’s visit:
Prime Minister Tony Abbott stared across the border at North Korea and labelled it an outlaw state and a threat to world peace on Wednesday.
Meanwhile, there were eyes staring right back.
As Mr Abbott inspected the T2 hut in the demilitarised zone, situated on the 38th Parallel, the old trench line where the 1953 ceasefire was signed, three North Korean guards came down the steps from the building across the border and stood just metres from the Prime Minister, taking their own souvenir photos and exchanging menacing glares with the US and South Korean soldiers.
The same bizarre theatre was played out when Canada’s prime minister, Stephen Harper, visited the same hut in 2009. In fact, I’ll bet this whole weirdly dangerous kabuki is played out whenever any world leader visits the T2 hut.
The blue huts you see in the picture I’m in are placed so that half of the hut is in North Korea and half is in South Korea. These are the actual buildings where the end of the Korean conflict was negotiated. Both Harper and Abbott entered these huts. The agreement between the Koreas is that both sides can have access to the huts. And when one side or the other is in the hut, the other side is shut out (via a locked door) unless they are invited in. So in walking the length of these huts, Abbott and Harper would, technically, be in North Korea. While they are on the North Korea side of the huts, North Korean solders play out this theatre of moving from window to window on the outside of the huts, taking pictures or staring (often with binoculars!) at the leaders inside. It is an extremely weird and extremely dangerous place.