MORNING CALM TALES New Year’s Eve in the DMZ

Jeffrey Miller visits the DMZ on New Year's Eve 1996. Courtesy of Jeffrey Miller

Whether you’re a long-term expat or a first-time visitor to Korea, sooner or later someone will say, “You should really see the DMZ.” It’s spoken the way people recommend a temple stay or a hike up Mount Bukhan — half tourism suggestion, half rite of passage.

Bill Clinton famously called the demilitarized zone separating the two Koreas “the scariest place on Earth” during a visit in 1993. That alone is usually enough to seal the deal.

I had been in Korea a little over six years when a buddy and I finally decided to see for ourselves just how scary the scariest place on Earth actually was. We signed up for a tour operated by the United Service Organizations (USO), the most straightforward and cheapest way back then. Along with a busload of other curious souls — military personnel, dependents and a handful of wide-eyed tourists — we headed north on New Year’s Eve, 1996.

I hadn’t given much thought to the date when we made our reservations.

New Year’s Eve in the DMZ.

It sounded less like a sightseeing excursion and more like the opening chapter of a Cold War thriller. I joked about it at the time.

It turned out I wasn’t entirely wrong.

Our tour guide was a relentlessly cheerful USO volunteer, one of those indefatigable souls who fielded questions with the energy of someone who had done this tour dozens of times but still found joy in explaining it anew.

The sky was a dull steel-gray, and the cold was sharp but not bitter — perfect weather for visiting the world’s most dangerous border.

As the bus pushed north, the tension on the peninsula still showed itself in concrete and steel. On the north bank of the Han River, massive anti-tank barriers crossed the highway. Further up, the Imjin River appeared. We crossed the narrow Freedom Bridge, flanked by the skeletal remains of an older bridge that was destroyed during the 1950-53 Korean War. It was impossible not to feel the weight of history pressing in from both sides.

We arrived at Camp Bonifas, named for Captain Arthur Bonifas, one of the two U.S. officers killed during the 1976 Panmunjeom axe murder incident. Before we went any farther, we were given a meticulous rundown of the DMZ’s history and the rules of conduct inside the Joint Security Area. No pointing. No waving. No mocking gestures. No sudden movements.

Then came the waiver.

We all signed a form stating that the United Nations Command held no responsibility in the event of injury or death caused by hostile action from North Korea.

That sentence landed with a quiet thud.

It was one thing to hear about danger in abstract terms. It was another thing to sign your name under a clause that calmly acknowledged the possibility of being shot by a hostile state.

A U.S. soldier armed with a .45 pistol took his seat near the front as our escort. The bus rolled slowly out of Camp Bonifas and toward the line itself. Along the way, he pointed out landmarks in a steady, almost casual voice: the two propaganda villages facing each other across the DMZ, the actual entry point into the DMZ thick with coils of concertina wire, and the Swedish and Swiss compound where the members of the Neutral Nations Supervisory Commission still maintained their quiet, watchful presence.

And then we were there. The Joint Security Area.

A South Korean military police officer stands guard at the DMZ between the two Koreas, Dec. 31, 1996. Courtesy of Jeffrey Miller

Stepping off the bus and crossing the pavement toward the blue Military Armistice Commission buildings felt surreal, like walking onto a movie set built by history itself. This was the place where the war never quite ended but only froze in place.

The day before, the remains of North Korean infiltrators from the Gangneung submarine incident had been returned through this very area, crossing the same line we now stood beside. Just months earlier, in September 1996, a North Korean submarine had run aground on South Korea’s east coast near Gangneung, Gangwon Province, triggering a weekslong manhunt involving tens of thousands of South Korean and U.S. troops. Most of the infiltrators were hunted down in the mountains. Eleven were executed by their own comrades to prevent capture. Only one was taken alive. Another was never caught, and it was believed he either died or escaped back to the North. It was a stark reminder that this border wasn’t a relic of history — it was still alive, still dangerous.

Across the narrow concrete line, the North's Korean People's Army (KPA) soldiers stood perfectly still inside their own territory. I remember thinking how strange it was that U.S. and ROK soldiers faced off with their North Korean counterparts, no less than 30 feet apart, both trained for war, in a place where nothing was supposed to happen and where everything always might.

A North Korean soldier stands guard at the DMZ separating the two Koreas, Dec. 31, 1996. Courtesy of Jeffrey Miller

That was the moment it truly hit me.

This wasn’t Checkpoint Charlie. This wasn’t a symbolic wall between ideologies that had already begun to crumble elsewhere. This was an unfinished war. An armistice without a peace treaty. A pause that had lasted longer than many lifetimes.

Later, I stood on a low grassy rise overlooking the site of the 1976 axe murders and the Bridge of No Return. I had seen photographs before, but standing there was different. It was unnervingly quiet. Somewhere beyond that stillness lay the route where prisoners of war had once crossed during “Operation Big Switch,” and where, in 1968, the crew of the USS Pueblo finally returned after 11 months of captivity.

The Bridge of No Return between the two Koreas. Courtesy of Jeffrey Miller

It was too much history for such a small piece of ground.

By early afternoon, we were back on the bus, heading south again. Seoul reappeared gradually as neon and traffic and exhaust reclaiming the edges of thought, leaving behind history and the scar that still cuts the peninsula in two.

That night, I met friends for dinner. We laughed. We ate too much. We eventually drifted out into Itaewon as midnight crept closer. The bars were packed shoulder to shoulder with soldiers, teachers, students and tourists, all of us chanting down the final seconds of 1996 together in a riot of music and raised glasses.

Somewhere beneath the noise and celebration, I still felt the cold from earlier that day.

Not the physical cold, which had long since burned off with the beer and the borrowed warmth of crowded rooms, but a deeper kind. The cold that comes from standing in a place where time feels compressed. Where the past isn’t past. Where the idea of war isn’t theoretical.

As 1997 arrived in a burst of cheers and cheap champagne, I found myself thinking of the motionless soldiers on the line. Thinking of young men who wouldn’t be celebrating anything that night. Thinking of how easy it is, living in the warmth and forward rush of Seoul, to forget that the Korean War never really ended.

Life surged forward all around us. Taxis honked. Someone pulled me into a drunken hug. A new year had begun.

But somewhere far to the north, the line still ran through the earth — quiet, unmoving, absolute.

And for the first time since I had arrived in Korea, I truly understood what that meant.

Jeffrey Miller is the author of several novels, including "War Remains," a story about the early days of the Korean War, and "No Way Out," a thriller set in Seoul in 1990.