Until January 2020, the joint security area of the Korean demilitarised zone (DMZ) was the one place on the peninsula where forces from North and South Korea stood face to face – a spot where Kim Jong-un and Donald Trump even met and shook hands. The US and South Korean troops stationed there have a lonelier watch now. On the North’s side, weeds poke out from the gravel and sprout between the steps of its Panmungak Hall, set just behind the demarcation line. Occasionally, soldiers venture out on to the terrace that runs along its first floor – but only clad in full hazmat suits. On an autumnal morning, the sole sign of life is a distant face peering through binoculars from the second floor. This wearer is in full protective gear too, though stationed safely behind glass. Since the emergence of Covid-19, the few windows into the country have slammed shut.
The victims are the North Korean people, now more isolated than ever. It’s also bad news for the rest of us, our ability to understand a totalitarian country with an ever-expanding nuclear programme even further reduced. Pyongyang’s recent flurry of missile tests, and the likelihood of a seventh nuclear test, have rightly commanded headlines. There is also, less happily, an insatiable appetite for tales of the country’s absurdities or lurid excesses, real or imagined. We’ve been told that Kim Jong-un had his ex-girlfriend killed by firing squad (she later appeared on television), that his uncle was not just executed but fed to dogs (a claim that originated as satire), and that state media insisted until recently that his grandfather had mastered teleportation. These stories feed on the west’s gullibility and desire for sensation and the regime’s well-documented cruelty, bombastic propaganda and genuine oddity – but also on Pyongyang’s obsessive secrecy: when so little can be seen, anything seems possible.
