Korea's bizarre cold-war border

"Ready to fight tonight," the motto of the GIs here, has suddenly taken on a different meaning, though as Secretary of State Colin Powell said two weeks ago in Seoul, "We have no plans to invade ... no armies are on the march ... the US is not on the verge of conflict." Yesterday, US and ROK troops conducted annual joint military exercises in South Korea.

"We are very concerned and worried," says a South Korean guard on the line who gives his name as Shin Moon. "We are watching the other side very closely. We just pray this turns out all right."

Adding to the unusual atmosphere are all the tour buses. The DMZ in recent years has become a commercial enterprise. The stretch of DMZ near Seoul is dotted with museums, full-scale models of the joint security area, deserted train stations, shrines to the dream of eventual unification, and observatories with high-powered telescopes that magnify the world on the other side, including "propaganda village," an empty town in North Korea where speakers blast praises to Kim six hours a day.

Imjingak, a border town built for refugees from the war, is one not-so-subtle tourist haven. Buses lumber past a soaring concrete monument to 17 South Korean diplomats blown up in Rangoon in 1983, an act often thought to be Kim's first major operation. They park next to "freedom bridge," where 13,000 Korean POWs returned home after the war. A few yards away is an amusement park with a Ferris wheel and a carousel in Candyland colors. Giggling Japanese teens wearing platform shoes snap photos and cruise through a souvenir shop peddling binoculars, toy guns, and Arnold Palmer golf towels. Published regulations at the DMZ rule out tank tops, sandals, military garb, shorts, or anything tight fitting. "Untidy hair" is out, so is denim - though if the rules were kept, half the tourists would be turned back.

Less than a mile north lies the "third infiltration tunnel." Visitors don white plastic helmets and descend 1,000 feet below the surface on a cramped tram to a dripping wet cavity bored out by the North and discovered by the South in 1978. The North is thought to have dug 20 tunnels under the DMZ capable of sending thousands of commandos per hour into the South; so far only four tunnels have been found. Upstairs, a new museum at Tunnel 3 features a DMZ panorama with life-sized soldiers peering through nettles on a spy mission, as stuffed deer, otters, and other wildlife surround them.

Indeed, the ecosystem has long been a way to see the bright side of things in the DMZ. The zone is a verdant natural wildlife preserve, a refuge for the rare red-crowned Manchurian cranes. "If the flowers and birds can live in harmony in the DMZ," a multimedia film asks touchingly, "Why can't we?" A Korean War photo essay on the wall just outside the museum theater offers an indirectly more pessimistic answer, with one panel reading, "Finally, after 765 talks between the North and South, an armistice was signed."

Dimensions

• 151 miles long and two-and-half-miles wide (on average)

• Encompasses about 5 percent of the Korean peninsula.

Troops along DMZ

• 37,000 Americans

• 600,000 South Korean soldiers and 1,024 police who man 114 guard posts

• 1 million North Koreans

Landmarks

• World's tallest flagpole (525 ft.) on North Korean side.

• Two "unification" villages. Inhabitants of the South Korean village, Tao Song Dong, are required to be either original residents or direct descendants of the villagers who resided there at the time the armistice was signed in 1953.

Hostilities

• More than 50 military incidents along DMZ and the coast since 1953 have left 677 dead, including 62 Americans.

Nature Haven

• Undisturbed by people, endangered cranes, deer, tigers, and leopards thrive.

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