Reclining on sofas at a South Korean cafe, customers sip iced americanos as they gaze past barbed wire fences and watchtowers at the mountains of North Korea.
Daonsoop cafe is so close to the North Korean border that to obtain the building permit, its owners had to construct the property with a bunker and fortified positions for tanks.
Founder Lee Oh-sook and her husband, both the children of North Korean refugees, built the cafe less than two kilometers from the border in Paju, seeking proximity to their ancestral homeland.
Photo: AFP
“From here, you can see North Korea, so close but inaccessible... Our parents always hoped to return to their homeland, but they died before realizing this dream,” 63-year-old Lee said.
“We chose to settle here to think of them more often.”
The two countries are technically still at war as the 1950-1953 conflict ended in an armistice rather than a peace treaty, and South Korea still refers to the border as the “front line.”
Photo: AFP
Below the cafe’s bay windows runs the Jayu-ro motorway, or “Freedom Road,” which in an ideal future would link Seoul to Pyongyang, but currently stops at the Reunification Bridge near the border.
The Imjin river, which separates the two Koreas, runs alongside the motorway, while a sign in a military-controlled border area warns that “trespassers may be treated as an enemy or suspect and shot.”
BUNKER ART GALLERY
Every night, giant loudspeakers across the border in North Korea broadcast blood-curdling sounds as part of a noise campaign emblematic of the two countries’ steadily declining ties.
The soundtrack of wolf howls, screams and ghostly creaks is so powerful it rattles the cafe’s windows.
Daonsoop is far from the only cafe with a view of the North: a Starbucks in an observatory on the border has itself become a tourist attraction.
But it is one of the closest by far, and it also has a bunker — requisitioned once a year by the South Korean army for military exercises.
The rest of the time, cartoonist and neighbor Kim Dae-nyeon uses the bunker to exhibit his artwork under his alias Danny Kim.
Hung between the bunker’s narrow loopholes overlooking the North, his drawings depict the pain of division and hopes for Korean reunification.
“This bunker is a space designed for combat, but I don’t see it that way. I see it as a place where freedom and peace begin,” Kim said.
In one drawing, an imagined bridge spans the Imjin river. Another shows weasels wearing noise-canceling headphones protesting the loudspeakers blasting from the North.
Outside, Kim has painted the walls of the tank yard in colors depicting the four seasons.
When life gets tough, “I come here to look at North Korea,” he said. “It makes me realize how relatively happy I am.”
Before his retirement, Kim was the head of South Korea’s National Election Commission. His 40-year career in the service of democracy, he says, has profoundly influenced his art.
NORMALIZED DIVISION
“I hope North Korea will also adopt democracy and freedom one day. My convictions about peace and freedom have continued first through my public career, and now in my artistic work,” he said.
The cafe also attracts North Koreans who have defected to the South. During family holidays such as Seollal (Lunar New Year) and Chuseok in the autumn, they can look across to their homeland from its terrace.
On the other side of the border, North Korean farmers go about their business, burning rice fields at the end of winter in a polluting agricultural practice eradicated in the South.
The pungent smoke billows across the border and envelops the cafe, but some customers, indifferent like many South Koreans to their northern neighbor, are unaware of the cause.
“It looks so calm and peaceful right now, but many visitors don’t know that the North is just across the road, so when they find out, they’re surprised,” Lee said.
“Most people forget that the country is divided and this reality is normalized.”
Just after 6am, I walked up to the ticket gate at Taipei Main Station and entered the Taiwan Railway platform without scanning any ticket; instead, I flashed the Sanrio Fun Rail pass on my phone to the gate worker and was admitted. I found my train and prepared to board. My destination? This very same station. I was embarking on a 13-hour journey on one of two round-the-island trains operated by ezTravel. They run each day, one counterclockwise around the island and one clockwise. They differ in a number of ways from an ordinary Taiwan Railway train and can make for
Jason Han says that the e-arrival card spat between South Korea and Taiwan shows that Seoul is signaling adherence to its “one-China” policy, while Taiwan’s response reflects a reciprocal approach. “Attempts to alter the diplomatic status quo often lead to tit-for-tat responses,” the analyst on international affairs tells the Taipei Times, adding that Taiwan may become more cautious in its dealings with South Korea going forward. Taipei has called on Seoul to correct its electronic entry system, which currently lists Taiwan as “China (Taiwan),” warning that reciprocal measures may follow if the wording is not changed before March 31. As of yesterday,
The Portuguese never established a presence on Taiwan, but they must have traded with the indigenous people because later traders reported that the locals referred to parts of deer using Portuguese words. What goods might the Portuguese have offered their indigenous trade partners? Among them must have been slaves, for the Portuguese dealt slaves across Asia. Though we often speak of “Portuguese” ships, imagining them as picturesque vessels manned by pointy-bearded Iberians, in Asia Portuguese shipping between local destinations was crewed by Asian seamen, with a handful of white or Eurasian officers. “Even the great carracks of 1,000-2,000 tons which plied
On Thursday, former Taipei mayor and founder of the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) was sentenced to 17 years in prison and had his civil rights suspended for six years over corruption, embezzlement and other charges. Seven others related to the case were also handed prison sentences, while two were found not guilty. It has been a bad week for the TPP. On Tuesday, prosecutors charged Chinese immigrant Xu Chunying (徐春鶯) with suspicion of taking part in Beijing-directed election interference. Xu has strong links to the TPP, which once offered her a party list legislator nomination. Tuesday also
RSS