Few have crossed this line in either direction and lived to tell about it. For 50 years, all communication has been severed. Neither electric wires nor telephone cables connect the two sides. Radio and television broadcasts are jammed both ways. Highways that were once bustling with traffic are overgrown with weeds.
Tall trees decorate rusting railway links.
Large, ominous signs warn would-be trespassers of mines. The pale blue barracks house offices and meeting rooms used by the guardians of an uneasy truce that has held for close to five decades. It is not peace that is main tained here. The Korean War, having claimed millions of lives between 1950 and 1953, was frozen in time with the signing of an armistice agreement, a cessation of hostilities. Technically the war never ended.