KEY POINTS:
When he's not on duty, Sergeant Corbin likes to relax with a quick round of golf. It has to be quick, because the only golf course on his base is a single hole, par 3. And it's no place for a stroll in the rough. The fairway is
ringed by landmines.
The course is a well-driven tee shot from the Demilitarised Zone (DMZ), the most heavily fortified border in the world. The strip of land, 4km wide and 250km long, divides the two Koreas.
And Camp Bonifas is the closest military base to North Korea. If war were ever to break out on the Korean peninsula, the camp and its 400 or so United Nations soldiers expect to bear the full brunt of a military assault from a million-strong army.
Corbin's rather exclusive 192-yard hole was dubbed "the world's most dangerous golf course" at the height of the Cold War. The name stuck, and the troops stationed there, most of whom are from the United States and South Korea, are fiercely proud of it.
"Damn right it's dangerous," smiles Corbin, a giant of a man with tightly cropped hair and the kind of square-cut jaw ideal for shaving commercials and the US army. "It's completely surrounded by minefields. If you hook your ball into the rough, I can tell you, you're not getting it back." A few weeks ago, he even managed to lose a golf club. "I headed down to the course and tried out a brand new club," he laughs. "If I'm honest, I might have had a few beers, so I wasn't exactly on my finest form. Anyway, I took a swing and the club flew straight out of my hand. A $400 golf club lying in the rough and I can't go get it!"
The 250km DMZ runs across the Korean peninsula like a gruesome scar, cleaving both a country and a people in two. It has separated families, friends and sworn enemies for over 50 years. Barbed wire fences, tank traps, artillery guns and minefields line both sides, creating a powerful obstacle between the two countries. Europe's Iron Curtain pales in comparison with its east Asian counterpart. People-power ultimately brought down Europe's ideological and physical barriers, but the sheer scale of the DMZ makes its removal, at present, a distant thought.
As you leave the relative safety of the heavily-fortified UN base and head deep into the no-man's-land of the DMZ, it's easy to imagine that Camp Bonifas is the start of some bizarre theme park where danger is the feature attraction and where reality verges on the absurd.
Although only 40km from South Korea's neon-clad capital, Seoul, the DMZ is virtually a world away. Driving out of Seoul's densely-packed northern suburbs and on to the so-called Freedom Highway (a four-lane expressway which, incidentally, boasts a number of collapsible concrete tank traps to block an invading army), arriving at the DMZ's first barbed wire checkpoint is a grim reminder of last century's deadly political brinkmanship. Here, in an isolated corner of East Asia, the Cold War still rages.
No place better illustrates quite how surreal the DMZ is than the truce village of Panmunjom, home of the UN's Joint Security Area (JSA), where soldiers from both Koreas stand just metres from each other at the only place where north and south meet without fences and razor wire.
A few minutes' drive north of Camp Bonifas, Panmunjom is the place where, on July 27, 1953, the Korean War was finally brought to a close after the death of, according to the more conservative figures, at least three million people.
It was the first hot war of the Cold War era and, despite three years of bitter fighting, neither the communist armies of North Korea, Russia and their Chinese "volunteers" on one side, or South Korea and her US-led UN force on the other had ultimately advanced beyond their original starting positions on the 38th parallel. The cease-fire signed on that day was simply an armistice agreement and, to this day, the two Koreas remain, technically, at war. Panmunjom is the only place where, when favourable relations permit, the militaries of the two Koreas can meet face to face.
In a claustrophobic little blue UN hut, placed squarely over the border, the two sides sit across a single wooden table.
Dressed in American aviator sunglasses and standing motionless in their trademark tae kwan do stance, South Korean troops silently face down their khaki-clad northern counterparts 24 hours a day.
The microphones that run down that table pedantically constitute the border, and the division is relaxed solely for the obligatory peace talk handshakes. The only other visitors to the hut are the 200,000 tourists that come to Panmunjom every year to view this ageing but very real relic of the Cold War.
But Panmunjom is a place constantly held hostage by the fickle relations between Seoul and Pyongyang and, when tensions flare, it has become as much a place of death and violence as it is a testament to reconciliation. At least 50 Americans, 1000 South Koreans and many more North Koreans have died in skirmishes along the DMZ. In 1984, three North Korean soldiers and one South Korean soldier were killed in Panmunjom after a firefight broke out when a Russian diplomat took the opportunity to defect to the south while on a visit. The diplomat simply ran past the guards and nearly started World War III.
Eight years earlier, in an incident described in the tourist literature as "the tree-chopping incident", two US soldiers were hacked to death by an axe-wielding North Korean as they tried to cut down a poplar tree obscuring their view. The camp was re-named after one of them, Captain Arthur Bonifas.
Yet, despite the incredible gap, both physical and psychological, that exists between the two Koreas, the DMZ may ultimately brings the Korean people together. Despite its long history of foreign occupation, Korea has been a single nation made up of one ethnicity for over 2000 years, and Koreans on both sides of the border are painfully aware of their recent divide.
"All Koreans, regardless of where they live, dream one day of unification," says Park Chan-bong, a senior official in South Korea's Ministry of Unification, the ministry charged with engaging their neighbours in the north. "I really don't think any politician, both in the north or the south, will have difficulty finding support for unification."
Thanks to the deal signed in February, when North Korea agreed to suspend its nuclear programme in exchange for aid, the relationship between Seoul and Pyongyang has improved dramatically. Aid shipments from the south to the poverty-stricken north have begun again, and last week, 102-year-old Choe Byeong-ok became the first South Korean to be linked up via video with his son in the north since family reunions were suspended last summer after Pyongyang's long-range missile tests.
But while some newspapers south of the DMZ have suggested that a peace treaty might be on the cards, veteran negotiators like Park Chan-bong believe unification would be impossible without North Korea giving up its nuclear ambitions.
"Without de-nuclearisation, I can't see any peace treaty insight. But unification within my lifetime? We've taken the first steps, so why not?"
- THE INDEPENDENT
