Yeoman 1 st Class (SW)Sean Jackson looks around from his desk, annoyed. Isn’t anyone going to answer
that phone? It’s been ringing and ringing. Someone please answer the phone! Where’s it coming from anyway? No one else seems to even notice it’s ringing.
Slowly, he realizes that he’s dreaming. The ringing phone isn’t coming from an office desk — it’s the duty phone beside his bed. The phone!
Rolling over quickly, with sleep still thick in his head, he gropes around the nightstand for the phone. He would have liked to ignore the persistent ringing, but that’s not possible. Answering the phone 24/7 is his primary purpose in life these days.
“Hello?” he asks. It’s just the standby watch checking in. “Oh, hey.What’s up, man? How long was the phone ringing? No problem, I had just dozed. We’ll talk about it in the morning. OK, later.”
Hanging up the phone, he rubs his hands over his scalp. Since he is up, might as well go check things out.
Jackson walks the short corridor to the main office and the security monitors of the Joint Duty Office (JDO). Opening the blinds and looking out the window across the Joint Security Area (JSA) of the demilitarized zone (DMZ) between North and South Korea, a mere 20 yards at most to the actual military demarkation line (MDL), he can hardly make out anything in the thick fog that blankets the area. Only the rectangular shape of the neutral blue NATO buildings straddling the line between North and South is faintly visible. Panmunjeom, the large building housing the North Korean army, is completely grayed out by the dense haze. He checks the infrared monitors for anything unusual. It’s eerily quiet as usual.
“At least they’ve stopped playing the propaganda music 24/7 like they were a few weeks ago,”mutters Jackson. “That used to really creep me out at night. It was straight out of a Rambo movie, with the rice paddies all over and armed soldiers up in towers with barbed wire fence everywhere. You remember the prisoner of war scenes where they blasted the music from speakers over the camp? That’s exactly what it felt like around here with that music going all day and all night.”
The Korean War halted when an armistice (or cease fire) agreement between the United Nations (U.N.) and North Korean military commanders was signed on July 27, 1953. This was a temporary measure until a peace treaty could be signed. Yet more than 50 years later, no peace officially exists between the warring countries.
Most days, Jackson says, independent duty at the JSA is fairly low-key, with tour groups routinely scheduled. But the history of the JSA, and the fact that the war between North and South never officially ended, is ever-present in his mind.
“I pay more attention to the news these days,” Jackson admitted. “Particularly stuff on foreign policy and politics. I don’t think the tourists who come up here really understand where they are. They’re thinking it’s all happy times, pictures and history. But, actually this is a very dangerous place for them.
“At any given moment North Korea could decide ‘Today’s the day’ and come across [the MDL]without warning. If that ever happens, it won’t matter that someone was here just to snap a few photos.”
In Jackson’s position, clear communication is everything. As the bloody past of the JSA has clearly demonstrated, words can easily be misunderstood or taken out of context, with fatal results.
It was only Aug. 18, 1976, (back when soldiers of both armies were allowed to move back and forth across the MDL freely within the confines of the JSA), when U.S. Army officers Major Arthur Boniface and 1stLt. Mark Barrett were brutally mowed down while attempting to trim the branches of a tree close to the MDL that obstructed their watchstanders’.
There are only three ways Jackson or his counterparts communicate with the North Koreans: a sound-powered phone, a fax machine and a faded, old bullhorn. Because the sound-powered phone is a direct line into Panmunjom, it’s stored in a soundproof box when not in use. Should the phone or fax not be answered in a timely manner, Jackson is escorted to the MDL by an armed ROK soldier to use the bullhorn in an attempt to gain a North Korean soldier’s attention.
