A unique living relic of the Cold War era, Panmunjeom is a small village that happened to lie at the final battle front of the Korean War. The truce that ended hostilities was signed here in 1953, but as peace was never agreed to, the two sides are still officially at war over fifty years later and a million men stand guard around the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ). There are no troops in the DMZ itself (except in the JSA), although both sides of the 4-kilometer strip of land separating the Koreas are the most heavily armed in the world: Pillboxes, land mines, barbed wire, and tank stoppers line the entire border and stretch back halfway to Seoul in the South and Pyongyang in the North. This section is often referred to as the Militarized Zone. In South Korea there are also adjacent border areas called Civilian Control Zones where public access is restricted.
One kilometer east of the former village (now deserted) is the Joint Security Area (JSA), an almost circular patch of land with an 800-meter diameter. The area is jointly policed by the South and North, and the two sides occasionally meet for discussions (or gunshots). Most of the time the soldiers glare at each other across the border and have not been allowed to cross the demarcation line into each other's side since the so-called Axe Murder Incident in 1976 (see below). Panmunjeom is on the Military Demarcation Line, which is the actual border between North and South Korea. The DMZ is a buffer along the north and south sides of the MDL (2 km into North Korea and 2 km into South Korea).
The Most Frequently Asked Travel Questions about Panmunjeom
Where To Stay & Best Hotels in Panmunjeom - updated May 2024
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Panmunjeom Travel Guide from Wikitravel. Many thanks to all Wikitravel contributors. Text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0, images are available under various licenses, see each image for details.
