There is a cornflower blue sky above the 38th parallel, belying one of the eeriest views on Earth. As multi-coloured pleas for peace flutter from the ledges of Goseong Observatory, the North Korean landscape that unfurls beneath remains just as it has since 1953: harsh, mysterious, inaccessible. Nowhere, not even the grim Cypriot ghost town of Varosha, left to peel and crumble ever since its residents fled the Turkish invasion of 1974, serves as such a haunting monument to partition.
A ghoulish fascination drives visitors to venture as close to this border as they dare. The unease is palpable. A South Korean soldier boards the bus, demanding every passenger’s date of birth. It is made clear that no pictures are permitted either of him or the military installations that line the road through Tongil Unification Park, where the driver is required to maintain a minimum speed of 45mph without...